


what is bred in the bone

by glitteration



Series: a voice straight to god [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Abby Griffin Tops Everyone, An Overabundance of Feelings, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Arcs Expressed via Hair, F/M, Team Adult Fuck Yeah, The Secondary Characters are Calling the Shots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2018-09-14 05:26:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9164137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteration/pseuds/glitteration
Summary: whatever's lost there is needed by both of us-a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,a key… even the silt and pebbles of the bottomdeserve their glint of recognition.- love poem ix, adrienne rich.s2, the Kabby Remix





	1. how many snow banks divide thee and me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Kane plays hero, Abby hates just about everything, Team Delinquent finally takes the stage, and Clarke remains stubbornly missing.

Their first night on earth is a cold one. Marcus rubs his hands together briskly before finally giving in and stuffing them in his pockets. Anyone trying to attack will have a good quarter mile to run, and that's more than enough time to excuse not having his hands free to use his weapon.

Abby makes noises about getting some sleep and he gives her vaguely worded promises of nothing; she accepts them with ill grace but she accepts them nonetheless, not trying to threaten refusing to get some rest until he agrees to do the same like he feared she might. She doesn't tried to kiss him again, either, and he's as disappointed by that as he is relieved. She squeezes his shoulder instead, touch lingering long after she takes her place by the fire, murmuring a quiet good night to Sinclair as she passes him at the edges of the group.

Once she's safe he turns his attention to the world around them again. The little details that turn the ground from dream to reality make themselves known as the night wears on. Everything has a sound, _everything_ , from grass to water to trees, embroidering a richer picture than he could ever have hoped to imagine circling from above.

 _Mom should be here_. The thought bubbles up unbidden from where he's tamped down the rage and pain, too obvious to lock back away. She should. Of all people, she should be here to see her faith given form. He gives it weight, but not control, and the anger sinks back down in reluctant inches. Allowing himself a moment of less than perfect vigilance can be excused. Drowning himself in what Diana Sydney's lust for a legacy cost him can't be.

Breathing in stings his nostrils and he savors it, gulping air without ration; air that smells anything but stale. He turns back to the details, taking in the way the air changes when the wind shifts, blowing the scent of the forest one moment and water the next.

The radio crackles to life just before dawn. Marcus watches from across the small firepit as Sinclair sits up like he's been jerked into wakefulness by unseen hands, already scrabbling at his face to turn on their side and return the signal. "Chancellor? Is that—"

"—clair? I repeat, this is Alpha station, reporting in. Can anyone hear me?"

Sinclair deflates a little and then jumps to his feet, gesturing for Marcus to turn his own comm on. "Sir? It's Alpha station. I'm not sure how long the signal's going to last, so if you—"

"Thank you, Mr. Sinclair." Abby's body draws his eyes like a magnet, huddled near the center of the group. Jackson was on Alpha. "This is Kane."

"Sir, it's Byrne."

"Byrne." Her voice chips away at the fear still bubbling below the surface. "It's good to hear your voice, major."

"Yours too, sir."

She doesn't try and make conversation, just waits for orders or more questions and he feels command settle more firmly on his shoulders, anchoring him to the ground. "Any losses obtained in the drop?"

"No sir. A few bumps and bruises but all passengers are present and accounted for. Yourself?"

"The same."

They share a moment of relieved quiet, then Byrne coughs and breaks it. "Sir, if you don't mind..."

"What is it, major?"

"I've done a bit of scouting, and we've landed in what might be the ideal spot to make at least a semi-permanent camp. Good visibility up until the treeline, flat land around us... and enough of the station itself remained intact to provide housing for at least a few hundred people. I think it's the best we'll find."

That's one worry ticked off the list, and Marcus can almost hear his mother's voice in his ear, exalting over gifts and signs. "From the sound of it, I agree. What are your coordinates? We'll leave as soon as it's light."

Abby begins to stir as Byrne reads him the coordinates. Her hand reaches for something, fingers opening and closing on air, and it brings a lump to his throat. She'd done that the first night she'd let him stay, murmured his name in her sleep and tried to pull him closer, not settling until he let her do it.

"When should we expect you?"

Tearing his eyes away from the way Abby rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand like a little girl, rolling over to look up at the sky, Marcus waits for Sinclair to put in Alpha's location. "We can't take too many breaks, but we should be able to get there before dark, maybe with a little time to spare."

"Did you get that, major?"

"I did, sir." It's rare to catch a crack in Byrne's consummate professionalism, but her relief is naked. "We'll keep the lights on, just in case."

He chuckles, quietly. "Tell our people we're nearly home."

"Was that Thelonious? Is he all right?" Abby's fingers burn through his jacket like hot coals, five points of heat on his forearm. "Good morning, Sinclair."

"Abby." He presses his lips together, bringing his hand out of his pocket to offer a small wave. "Sleep well?"

Nothing he's said should make Marcus want to defend himself, but the urge presses insistently at the back of his mind. It's in the way he says it; there's not a chance he hasn't noticed, and Marcus can feel the strangest mix of embarrassment and gratification burst and mingle in his chest. People know—Sinclair knows, and Abby has to know that, but she only leans against his side and returns Sinclair's smirk with a quiet smile.

"I did." Nudging his side with an elbow, she raises one eyebrow. "You never answered me. Is Thelonious all right?"

"I don't know." Her face twists, ready to push back, and Marcus shakes his head. "It was Alpha station, Abby."

"...Alpha." The hollows under her cheekbones become more pronounced, the way they always do when she's steeling herself to ask something that might have a devastating answer. "Did they—"

"No casualties. Everyone's safe." _Jackson's_ safe, to answer the question he's not cruel enough to make her ask. "That was Major Byrne with the coordinates. We're a good half a day's walk away, but we're moving out soon."

It's amazing she managed to hide so much from him with a face as expressive as Abby's is; relief develops first, and then gratitude, that light touch on his arm now purposeful. "Thank you, Marcus."

Sunrise touches her hair with gold, sparks glinting at her crown as she walks away. Sinclair coughs discreetly and Marcus wrenches his attention back to anything but how Abby looked at him like _he'd_ been the one to bring Alpha back, trying to ignore the phantom fingertips still branded into his arm.

"Did you—"

"Plot the fastest route to Alpha, based on the basic readings I could pick up? Here." Sinclair doesn't quite vocalize that's he's two steps ahead, but the message is clear.

"Good work, Sinclair." He _is_ two steps ahead; he always is, and it's part of what makes him invaluable. They might make it without him, but it would only be through luck. He glances at Abby, deep in conversation with Scanlan. As far as essential personnel go, the only people they absolutely cannot stand to lose are both within his grasp, where he can keep an eye on them both. "We'll move out within the hour. Can you think of anything on the ship we need before we leave?"

He shakes his head, looking pained to deliver the refusal. "Need, no. I can think of a few things that might come in handy, but nothing worth lugging all that way right now."

"We can come back." Abby would reach out and touch him, pat his shoulder and reassure him that way, but indulging in that much familiarity without invitation makes Marcus feel ungainly, a man stumbling around in the dark hoping by some miracle to find what he's looking for without knowing where it is. "Once we've built something more permanent, we can salvage the ship. Then you can strip it down to the last nut and bolt, if you like."

"I'm going to take you up on that." Sinclair's neck makes a sound like a branch splintering when he rolls it to the side, and he sighs in relief. "Should I start letting people know it's time to get ready to move?"

"If you could."

When he leaves Marcus turns to squint at the horizon. Pictures don't do dawn justice, the way pink and orange slowly give way to delicate blue, and nothing he imagined as a child could do justice to how it feels to know that. It's going to be easy to slip into that feeling and lose focus, and with one last look he hardens himself against anything more than appreciation and turns to helping Sinclair gather their people.

 

* * *

 

The night's chill is gone before they hit the edge of the forest, and the heat grows more and more oppressive as the day marches onward and they push deeper into the trees. It's nothing like the dry heat of the Ark, or the searing heat of his climb through the vents. It's wet. Heavy. Sweat pools at the bends of his knees and elbows, his lower back, temples and neck and chest, all collecting to saturate his clothes and make them cling uncomfortably. It's _thrilling_ , discomfort making the ground real in a way awe couldn't.

Behind him, Abby grimaces, lifting her hair off the back of her neck and before twisting the heavy mass deftly and holding it in a loose fistful at the base of her neck. "I can find a lot to hold against Diana, but taking out the showers is on top of the list right now."

"It looks like there are a couple sources of running water near the coordinates Major Byrne sent over. With any luck, we can use one of them to clean up." Sinclair curses quietly when his heel snags on a root but rights himself without help, shaking his head. "The change from artificial gravity takes a little getting used to."

"Oh, thank God." The relief in Abby's voice is barely exaggerated. "I've been reduced to telling myself we _all_ smell horrible to make myself feel better."

"Well, you aren't wrong."

They laugh quietly and Marcus feels his mouth tug into a tiny smile even as he does his best to pretend none of their conversation is penetrating his concentration on the forest around them.

"You know, you're supposed to say 'no, Abby, you d—'"

"Shh." There's something off about the quiet ahead of them, a depth to the stillness that makes the hair on the back of his neck rise. "You two, stay here. Keep the rest of them back. Banks, Acosta, with me."

It's a lack of animals, he realizes, advancing forward carefully. Silent hasn't been silent until now, and the abrupt end to that bright chatter of birds means something. What that something is becomes clear around the next bend, and he raises his arm in a signal to halt. It's hard to find the foolish child who wasted all that air and the desperate young man who shot his chancellor under the layers of grime they're both caked in, but it's unmistakably Bellamy Blake, hobbled together with what looks like the boy who cost them all that air, both of them being dragged behind a grounder on horseback.

His shot is nearly safe to take when two of the other children throw themselves out of the foliage and at the grounder. It's entirely foolish of them; brave, as well, but the kind that might get them killed if they weren't being shadowed by people more capable of turning the tide their way. Their risk moves the grounder into a better position and Marcus takes the opportunity, exhaling sharply as he pulls the trigger. Once sends the man to his knees, and twice sees him quiet on the ground.

Once he clears their line of sight the fear in the kids' expressions turns to shock, then quickly to relief. It feels cleansing, after seeing so many eyes turned his way in suspicion, to be the source of something like this. Something _good_. He stands a little taller, giving the boys on the ground a reassuring nod. "It's going to be all right. We're here, now."

The grounder's forehead is a red ruin when Marcus flips him onto his back, but it's not the wound that draws his attention. There's no tactical armor, just crude pieces of metal and hides somehow welded together, and no obvious weaponry beyond a few knives; if he had been a deserter, that might explain it, but the lack of either advantage when the kids had guns doesn't fit.

Sitting back on his heels, he gives the silence another moment to build and pass, then gestures to Banks to give the all clear. Abby can barely tumble out from behind the trees fast enough to ask the boys about Clarke, and a dull throb takes residence just behind his right eye. Until they find her daughter she's going to throw herself around every blind corner she sees, hoping Clarke can be found just out of sight.

No sooner than he has the thought, Finn offers her that blind corner. She's in motion before he can finish offering to take her to the dropship, and Marcus tosses an arm out to impede their progress.

"Wait." Abby's eyes flash, and he holds up a hand to stall the argument he can already see her forming. "We need to think this through first. Sinclair?" The way he immediately appears at Marcus' elbow only solidifies his choice. "We're going to need to split up. Abby and I'll take one detail with us to the dropship, everyone else follows you. You have the coordinates?" Sinclair nods. "Then go, and we'll follow as soon as we can."

"Yes, sir." One of the things he's always appreciated about Sinclair is his familiarity with the unspoken; Marcus doesn't need to explain why he chose him, or what it means, because he _asked_ and that explains enough. The responsibility sits well on Sinclair's shoulders, his posture straightening and turning him into something grander than his sweat-soaked shirt and filthy state would give him credit for.

"Has there been any word from Jaha?"

He has his answer before Sinclair opens his mouth to confirm it. "No. Not since this morning."

"Okay." He inhales deeply, settling the unavoidable truth like mantle around his shoulders, and moving forward knowing the chancellor has already spoken to his people for the last time. "All right. You six, you're with us." He nods to Banks, confirming his detail will be coming with them. "The rest of you, follow Sinclair to Alpha."

"All right people, let's go." Sinclair claps his hands, startling a bird in the trees into raucous protest. "Come on, time to move. We want to be there before dark."

Marcus waits for them to clear the trees before turning back to their "You two—lead the way." Finn and Bellamy take off at a pace that belies their injuries, and his estimation of the ground's effect as a sharpening agent jumps another notch. As Abby passes him, hot on their heels, he stills her with a gentle touch on her lower back, hand spanning almost its entirety. "You're almost there, Abby." He can feel her shiver at the words, eyes fixed on Bellamy's back and lit from behind with barely suppressed need. "Let's go find her."

The walk to the dropship wouldn't take long at a sedate pace, and the one the boys set is anything but. It's not just anxiety. They're confident in these woods, too familiar with the terrain to be anything but experienced in traversing it. Abby keeps her feet through sheer force of will, but Marcus' own shins bear the evidence of his own lack of experience moving across uneven ground.

The first corpse is half hidden by a broken branch, only the garish red of the boy's jacket giving evidence to the body under the leaves. Then there's another, and another, and another, each left where they dropped; each killed in battle. The path to the ship is lined with them, and they come to a stop amid a cluster of dead children. Bellamy and Finn barely seem to see them, and his gathering fear crystalizes into one, simple question: what _happened_ to them. To all of them, the ones who survived and the ones who didn't.

"It's too quiet." Bellamy verbalizes his own worries, sinking back onto his heels with a pained grunt when Marcus stops him from pursuing the matter on his own.

"We'll take it from here. Banks, Scanlan, you stay with these two." He'd like to insist Abby stay, and the order rests on his tongue before he swallows it back. She'd never follow it, not with Clarke this close. "We'll signal when we've made sure the ship is clear."

The unnatural stillness continues, the only sounds their breathing and ash under their boots, then low cursing when Fischer kicks in a skull and nearly falls backpedaling away from the ash. Even that doesn't upset the general quiet, and when Abby rushes to enter the ship right behind him he doesn't try to stop her.

"Help her." It's just as hard to find the John Murphy they'd sent down in the battered, bloody wreck on the floor as it was to reconcile the others, but Abby's mechanic is largely unmarred by the gore surrounding them.

" _Raven_." Abby's knees make a soft thud as she cups the girl's face in her hands. "Raven, honey, it's Abby. I need you to wake up, Raven."

He's not able to see their faces from his position, but he can hear the involuntary sigh of relief Abby makes before Raven crushes that frail, trembling hope. "Clarke's not here." Abby's shoulders stiffen and then sink inwards, barely a collapse at all for anyone not Abigail Griffin and Marcus aches for the lack of a girl he's barely spent more than an hour with before he'd sent her to earth to live or die on her own merits. "I don't know where she went."

Abby's voice is thick with pain deferred. "What happened to you?"

Raven's pause goes on just a hair too long to escape his notice. "I got shot."

Marcus frowns, shifting so he can get a look at her face. She's not lying about being shot; there's no point, not when Abby will uncover the lie once they reach camp, but the way she phrases it is impossible to ignore. It lingers as he helps Murphy outside, tugging at his sleeve and refusing to be ignored. _I got shot_. Murphy babbles an explanation, his new obsequiousness another lie that isn't quite a lie.

Bellamy provides the answer to the riddle. He's slipped free of the guard somehow, and he hones in on Murphy with singleminded purpose. He telegraphs his intentions a split second too late to stop him, driving the other boy into the ground and bringing a fist crashing into his jaw with enough force to split his knuckles open.

"Murdering—son of a bitch—" Bellamy trips over his words, slurring them together in rage. "For Raven, you son of a _bitch_ —"

This isn't the promising cadet, or the the defeated young man he'd been after his mother's flouting of the rules cost him his family. It's not even Clarke's silent shadow from the few times he'd helped her brief them on the situation with the grounders. He's entirely insensible; almost feral, hands locked around Murphy's throat, withstanding his flailing arms and attempts to buck Bellamy off with bloody-minded persistence.

When Fischer looks to him for permission to proceed with the usual riot measures, Marcus nods. Fischer's shock baton springs to life with an expectant hum and moments later, Bellamy is on the ground, gasping like a landed fish as Murphy does the same beside him.

Looking down at the two boys and feeling very old, Marcus looks to Fischer, gesturing for him to put away the baton. "Mr. Blake is under arrest. Tie his hands, Fischer."

Finn rushes to his defense, obviously worn ragged. "No, wait, Bellamy's not the one— _Murphy_ killed two of our people, and he shot Raven. He tried to _hang_ Bellamy. He was just—"

"I don't care." If all that's true, Murphy will need to join Bellamy in lockup, but one doesn't excuse the other. "You are not animals." Finn looks bewildered, and Marcus' frustration grows teeth. "There are rules. _Laws_." Laws they obviously cast aside to go at each other like savages. Spinning to take in Bellamy, still defiant even with his arms bound behind his back, he meets his eyes and puts all the certainty he feels into the reprimand. "You are not in control here anymore."

Bellamy sags in Fischer's grip, and Marcus holds his gaze until it drops and Finn breaks the silence. "Raven!"

Whatever grip on consciousness she had is gone now, the body on the stretcher still other than the rising and falling of her chest.

"She's all right, but she's lost a lot of blood. It's miracle she made it this long without help." Finn nods, anxiously squeezing Raven's hand, before his eyes turn to the ship and then back to Abby, asking the question without words. "There's no one else in there."

Dismissing Finn and snapping at the guard with uncharacteristic bite, she directs them to set Raven on the long slab of metal serving as a table set off to one side, where she's elevated and away from Murphy. Marcus strides after her, Finn hot on his heels. He very nearly sends him away; it's what he should do, for order's sake, but if it were Abby on that stretcher he's not sure what he'd do to the man standing in his way.

Abby nods at them both in a terse greeting. "She's going to need surgery. Soon. With any luck, it's just going to be a matter of finding where the bullet came to rest."

"And if we don't have any luck?" Finn's voice is choked.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Abby crosses her arms over her chest defensively, turning to look accusatorially at him, eyes shining with tears she rapidly blinks back. She knows what they need to do, he realizes. Even if they knew where to start looking for her, Clarke is now secondary to Raven's survival.

His chest feels tight, ribs shrinking and squeezing like iron bands. Abby looks brittle, and one solid blow would shatter her into jagged pieces. "We need to keep moving." If she can admit the truth, he can spare her the final indignity of arguing for it. "We don't know where to start looking for the kids, but we can help Raven."

She inclines her head in the barest of nods, looking so distant his hands itch with the need to touch her and somehow bring her back from whatever terrible place she's withdrawn to. "You're right. I'll be ready to leave, I just need to..." She wanders off without finishing the sentence, steps unsteady but path back to the ship true.

Finn follows her, breaking off midway to crouch by Bellamy. Left alone, Marcus takes the moment to study the source of so much of the day's action, struck by a wave of unfamiliar tenderness. Frowning, he brushes a leaf from Raven's cheek, pushing back a fallen strand of hair when his gesture knocks it out of place. She's so _young_. They all are, and he sent them down without a single member of the guard to keep watch. Charles had volunteered, and he refused to consider it. It might not have changed anything, but they're another sin to add to his list.

"Finn?" Raven's voice is a barely audible croak, the plaintive confusion of someone still on the edge of sleep. "Finn..."

"Shh. It's all right." Awkwardly, Marcus hums the same comforting nonsense Abby had used to comfort him, quickly dropping back into silence when Raven mumbles a reply and drifts back into unconsciousness, face going lax with sleep once more.

Banks and Scanlan have been studiously avoiding looking his way, giving the very barest illusion that his fumbling attempts at soothing a scared girl haven't been witnessed by two of the people he needs to command.

Marcus sighs, shaking his head. They're good soldiers, they won't read the wrong thing into it. "All right, you two. We're on the move."

 

* * *

 

The edges of the metal she picked to carve her message for Clarke into the dropship dig painfully into her palm, but Abby tunes it out. It takes force to etch each letter deep enough to stick despite the weather, and it's force she can hardly afford to spare. She's not quite done when Marcus calls for her to come with them, and the look of understanding he gives her when she glares at him and gets back to writing makes her want to scream and beat the ground with her fists. It's not fair, he knows it's not fair and he _still_ expects it of her.

When Alpha's location is etched in the ship, Abby steps back, meeting Bellamy's eyes as she joins the column and seeing her own turmoil reflected back. Then the guard Marcus has escorting him yanks him forward and gestures for her to make her way up the line towards Raven, leaving her alone in her discontent.

The feeling curdles in Abby's stomach as they move forward. They can't go anywhere but Alpha now, not with Raven's life hanging in the balance. Not when she's the only one who can do something about it. Knowing that doesn't make abandoning the possibility of going after Clarke right now any easier, not when she was supposed to _be_ there. She feels like a child promised a gift only to have it snatched away, enraged but powerless to defend against something so obviously spiteful.

Marcus leads the way to Alpha, assigning the guard with Bellamy to the middle of their slow-moving caravan, behind the stretchers. Raven is out again, and Bellamy alternates between staring at her and staring at Murphy, who pointedly pretends he can't tell Bellamy is telegraphing every intention to finish what he started. Finn's eyes are for Raven alone, every inch the boy she'd been willing to plunge to earth to see. It's good to see he survived, and a thimbleful of the despair hovering above her lifts, seeing the evidence of her efforts being rewarded.

The walk gives her enough time to think, and while Bellamy watches Raven and Murphy Abby watches him, waiting until Marcus is out of earshot to fall back alongside the object of her attention.

"Give me your knife." The guard next to Bellamy looks startled, and Abby holds out her hand expectantly, leaning on assumed authority to chip away at his resistance before Marcus can notice and stop him. "Well? Your knife. I need it."

"Ma'am, I don't think..."

"Your knife, please." He looks between her open palm and the slowly widening gap between where her feet are planted and the front of the pack, handing it over with visible apprehension. "Thank you."

Bellamy's bonds fight the dulled blade before giving up the ghost and falling to the ground, split neatly in two. He rubs his wrists carefully, watching her like a snake about to strike.

"How's your circulation?"

"...fine." Even if the marks from the attempted hanging Finn mentioned weren't visible through the blood spattering his upper body, his voice would be a dead giveaway. The recent trauma is obvious in the way it scrapes along his lower register. "Thanks."

She nods. "You're still arrested."

"Yeah, I figured."

"What— _Abby_ , you can't—" Marcus leads everyone else back to them, angry red touching the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. "Did you cut those?"

"He's not going to attack anyone else." Abby looks back to Bellamy, brows arched expectantly. "Are you?"

The look he turns on Murphy is more than enough to make her worry she's severely miscalculated—it's vicious, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a silent growl. Marcus takes one anxious step closer and then that mask of vengeance is gone, replaced by a tired man barely old enough to deserve the title. "I won't touch him. Just leave my hands free. I need to be able to fight."

"You're still under arrest. When we arrive—"

"You'll lock me up. She told me."

Marcus gives them both a narrow-eyed glare, back teeth clenched tight. "Olivera, watch him."

Bellamy waits until he strides back to the front of the column to snort, following Abby's lead and letting her place her body between him and their uniformed shadow, watching the stubborn dance with the first spark of humor she's seen in his eyes once Olivera gives up and resigns himself to just trailing behind them. "Kane's pissed at you. I see where she gets it from, now."

 _Clarke_. Abby's heart stops on a helpless little flutter. "Last time you saw her... what happened?"

He fidgets, looking down at his boots. "There was an attack—"

"Ma'am, I don't think—"

" _Quiet_." Olivera's too well-trained by years in the guard not to respond to the note of command only life on Alpha can provide, and he falls sharply silent. "Bellamy, tell me what happened."

"There was an attack. Clarke closed everybody up inside, and they turned on the engines." His eyes go flinty. "We got them good."

Abby pictures the charred skeletons, curled in defensive positions, hands still grasping for sanctuary in death and wants to disagree with his assessment that good had anything to do with it, but the need to hear about Clarke overrides anything else. "But she was all right, you're sure?"

"I am."

She was—she _is_ safe. Abby cauterizes the open wound of disappointment with belief, helpless to do anything else about it. "Thank you." He nods, lapsing back into silence. There's a ragged edge to his breathing, and Abby frowns listening to it. "How's your throat? I'm sure it hurts and I can't do much for that right now, but if your breathing is impacted—"

"It's not."

"Would you tell me the truth if it was?"

His laugh is reluctant. "Not right now."

"If it becomes a problem, I want to know about it." His looks of relief fades when she adds, "And I'll take a look when we reach Alpha."

"Not sure Kane'll like that."

Abby gives him a tight smile. "Let me worry about that."

Bellamy considers her words, watching her out of the corner of his eye with the look of a man trying to decide if speaking up is worth the breath. "She talked about you. Raven." His clarification helps her breathe easier. Talking about Clarke is one thing; talking about what Clarke had to say about her is something else entirely. Raven is safe ground, and she nods encouragingly. "Murphy was the one who shot her."

Abby blanches. "Bellamy..."

"He killed two of our people. He can't be trusted." When she doesn't stop him, Bellamy barrels onward. "Whatever he says, it's all bullshit. He told the grounders everything about us, all our defenses and our tactics. Our numbers. He'll say anything to save his own skin."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Not trusting the sincerity in her voice, Bellamy searches her face before nodding in satisfaction. "Good."

"You should know, I'm not on the council anymore." She'll do her best to push Marcus, but if he's hoping her voice carries political weight he'll be disappointed. Giving Bellamy any other impression and encouraging false hope wouldn't be fair.

"Yeah, but you can talk to Kane." He holds up his hands, suspended a half inch apart as if still shackled. "You got him to clear giving me my hands, you can convince him Murphy's full of shit."

"I can try," she corrects him gently. "And I will, but that doesn't mean he'll listen."

"I just want to find her." The confession is so quiet she barely hears it, and when she looks over at him he's staring down at his boots. "Please."

"I'll try." She allows what it cost her to leave the dropship behind out, just long enough to convince him.

"Good." He falls silent, a purposeful end to the conversation. His shared desperation to see Clarke buoys her and Abby moves forward to walk next to Raven, one hand coming to fall on her shoulder for the rest of the journey.

 

* * *

 

Sinclair is at the gates to greet them, arms warm when he draws her into a brief embrace before she hears Jackson's voice and everything else dims in importance to having him safe and alive and within reach.

His hands are too tight on her biceps, fingertips biting down with bruising force as he buries his face in the crown of her head and inhales, whole body trembling. "Abby."

Jackson's safety doesn't erase not finding Clarke, but her bleak mood is powerless in the face of that blinding rush of joy. "Jackson." She allows them both a moment to soak in the relief before pulling away to direct the guards with the stretcher to follow them. "Where are we treating the wounded?"

"I had Byrne get the guard to build us a couple tents for now. It's not much, but it's separated from the rest of the mess and we can keep everyone out of the sun, at least."

"That's perfect." As far as stopgap solutions go, it _is_ , and Abby's nod of pride makes Jackson duck his chin.

"I started treatment on some of the more minor cases already, but it took most of the day to set this up and I wanted to wait until then, with all the dust flying around."

"Good. I'll see to these two," she nods to Raven and Murphy, "Then I'll join you?"

Raven doesn't wake when they transfer her from the stretcher, and Finn settles down by her side to keep watch. With that taken care of, Abby turns to Murphy, struggling to keep her anger buried deep. He wisely stays quiet, allowing her to check the wound on his thigh and then stitch and bandage it with only a few grunts of pain. The guard remove him to a side room once she's done, and Abby feels the strength keeping her moving start to ebb, victim of a lack of purpose.

She turns to unpacking and not helping Jackson once he assures her he has it in hand, taking refuge in the simplicity of a job with a clear path to completion. Marcus' familiar tread breaks her concentration, pausing outside the flaps the guard fashioned before pushing them back.

He doesn't immediately announce himself, and Abby takes advantage of the silence. "Before you say whatever it is you need to say, can you—" She can't quite make herself say the words, not when her emotions roil so close to the surface. If she's said them and he tells her no, it might be the last blow that drives her to her knees and so she just holds her arms out, a child begging for comfort.

They've held each other in bed, with his guard down and defenses stripped, but not like this. He's stiff, muscles taut under her hands when she wraps her arms around his waist and presses her face to his chest, then his reserve crumbles and he holds her back nearly as fervently as she clings to him, one hand coming up to stroke her hair.

"I'm sorry, Abby." His voice rumbles against her ear, a feeling as much as a sound. "We'll find her."

"I know." She has to, if she wants to stay on her feet. Drawing in one last slow breath, she drops her arms to the side and steps back, already missing the feeling of his arms around her even in the heat of the tent. "What did you need to tell me?"

He pauses, looking conflicted. "Sinclair said there's been no word from Jaha since that last call. I think we need to assume that we won't hear anything else, going forward."

There hasn't been a moment in her life without Thelonious as part and parcel, as much a given as the hum of climate control or her future in medical; a pillar holding up part of her reality. His loss feels impossible. She hears her voice crackle around the edges, giving life to the obvious conclusion. "And that makes you chancellor."

"It would, yes." If he looked at all pleased Abby's not sure she could control the urge to rend him in two, but there's nothing of his old ambition looking back at her. "Holding elections right now would be close to impossible, and—"

"You don't need to justify it." He doesn't, regardless of what the part of her howling that the world's taken one too many people from her and this one is the last she'll stand thinks. It's not Marcus' fault. It's not _anyone's_ fault, not this time. "I think it's the best choice."

"Thank you."

"It's the truth." Turning away from his gratitude, Abby picks up a box and starts to restack them across the room, an excuse to look busy and occupy trembling fingers. "You didn't come here just to tell me that, though. Did you?" He has his hands loosely linked behind his back, posture too straight to feel right when it's just the two of them.

"No, I didn't." He takes a deep breath. "You shouldn't have released Bellamy, Abby. Not when I gave orders to keep him contained until we arrived back here, and certainly not right in front of the guard."

"Don't challenge your authority, you mean?" Anger cuts through her numbness, invigorating her again. She embraces it, warding away the infinitely more damaging grief.

He doesn't even have the good grace to look ashamed. "Exactly."

Abby sets down the box of tools in her hand with an angry thud. "He was injured. He was _afraid_."

"He attacked—"

"Someone who shot his friend." Abby pictures Raven's face, lips white around the edges, and feels a sliver of the rage Bellamy brought to bear work its way into her heart. "I think under these circumstances, we can allow some understanding."

"Under these circumstances, we need to be more careful than ever." Gesturing at the world outside the makeshift tent, he shakes his head. "They're _all_ afraid. We can't give any indication that violence will be tolerated."

"Fine." Bellamy is an exception they should make, but he's right, and there's no time to fight this battle right now. Not when Raven will need her full attention as soon as she stirs.

"Abby—"

"I said, _fine_." Their last days on the Ark was a pause between breaths, existing in a space all its own. The Marcus who lingers outside her door and kisses her with such reverence it steals her breath isn't the one who stands before her now, abashed but refusing to apologize.

"Thank you." He hesitates, then offers gingerly, "I am sorry about Clarke, Abby."

His attempts to be kind only make it worse, and the box rattles dangerously when she picks it up again, this time to hide the way her hands want to ball into fists. "Murphy's cleared if you're ready to arrest him, too. He's been stabbed, but he's not in any immediate danger of dying. That seems to be enough right now."

The barb lands, and Marcus' eyes go liquid with hurt and before icing over. "Then I'll see to the transfer. Jackson."

He's standing by the entrance, unashamedly listening in, eyes sharp as he takes in their mutual tension. "Kane. Abby, I think Raven's waking up."

"I'll go. Abby, I'll—we'll talk about this again later." He pauses midway through shoving the strips of netting serving as a flap aside, keeping his back to her. "Tonight."

Jackson glares suspiciously at the doorway even after Marcus exits, shaking his head before heaving a deep sigh and turning back to her, running a hand over his face with an increasingly familiar need to keep sweat from dripping in his eyes. "I lied about Raven. I think it'll be soon, but she's still out. I just thought maybe you could use an excuse."

"Thank you."

"What did he do?"

"Jackson..." Pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, Abby carefully counts to five, pushing back the angry and fear and the need to leave, _now_ , and go find her daughter. "It really doesn't matter."

"It does when we just got here and you already look like this."

"It's not him."

"Abby—"

"Clarke is missing." She doesn't recognize her own voice, the strangled way her throat closes around the end of Clarke's name and tries to keep the truth from escaping and becoming real. Marcus is immediately forgotten and Jackson's suspicion washes clean, sympathy taking its place. "She was at the ship, and now she's not. None of them are."

Saying it makes it real and Jackson's hands close around her elbows, holding her up as her knees start to waver and pulling her into his chest. "She's okay."

"What if we're too late?"

"We aren't. We won't be."

That's her own intractable hope reflected back in his voice, and Abby holds him tighter. "Thank you, sweetheart."

"You're welcome." He gives her a moment to collect herself before adding, "We really should go look in on Raven. I'd give it another hour, but it could be five minutes. You know how these things work."

"I do." After taking one last bracing breath in the circle of his arms, Abby steps away. "We're going to need to take that bullet out."

"We don't have any—"

"We'll make do without." He nods, a worried little jerk of his chin, and she pats his arm. "You've done this before, and Raven is a strong young woman. She made it this far, she'll make it through this too." It's only half baseless faith; Raven's injuries are more than enough to fell someone twice her size, but her tenacity extends to clinging to life. If anyone is going to survive this, it would be Raven. "We don't have anything but basic sterilization procedures, so while we're waiting on her I need you to get a fire going and do it that way. It's crude, but it's better than nothing."

The idea of doing surgery this sensitive would be daunting enough without anesthesia, but the lack of a proper operating room or anything but the most basic ways to keep infection from setting it make it monumental. It's terrifying, but it's centering. These are stakes she understands. Clarke is lost and until they can look for her, she'll stay lost. Raven is here and her wounds are ones Abby knows how to fix.

Jackson nods at the order, already turning to gather what they'll need. Once he's gone Abby steels her spine and looks in at Raven, sighing in relief when her breathing is still shallow but steady before exiting to take care of the few scattered patients still waiting. Their pain is something she can concentrate on before the next wave of choices make themselves known, and she throws herself into the work with a single-minded ferocity, ignoring the siren's call in the back of her mind: _Clarke. Clarke, Clarke, Clarke_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season two begins! Sorry for the wait, the holidays were much crazier than I expected them to be. Thank you to everybody who sent me asks or left comments or kudos, I'm blown away by you all. You're the tops. <3


	2. i felt so much that i was afraid i should betray a weakness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Kane gets autocratic, Abby commits a felony or five, and people come together as things fall apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> special dedication to the Saltvengers; you are my heart's home, my lovely lady lobsters.

Jackson really had done a good job running things in her absence. A quick round of murmured check ins finds everyone resting as comfortably as they can be, and before long Abby finds herself unable to avoid confronting the reality that waits for her on an operating table a room away.

Finn won’t be pried from Raven’s side for anything, and Abby finally sighs and gives up the ghost after demanding a promise he’d pull his chair a few feet away and not interrupt her. She can only put off examining Raven for so long before she starts to risk her genuine return to consciousness, and it’s better to take the time to do the work now and compose herself if the prognosis isn’t hopeful.

From the first gentle press of her fingertips to the florid bruises marring the gentle slope of Raven’s back, it’s clear that things aren’t as she hoped they’d be. More careful pressure bears out the worry into reality: the bullet is still moving.

Finn stands in a rush of movement, promise forgotten. “What is it? Abby, what’s wrong with her?”

“Give me a moment, Finn.”

"Dr. Griffin?" Byrne hovers at the mouth of their makeshift operating room, flanked by David Miller and two guards she recognizes but can’t quite remember by name, Murphy in front of them all with his hands bound back together. Relief flooding her at another excuse to push off making the truth about Raven’s situation real by seeing it reflected in Finn’s eyes, she nods a greeting. "Ma'am, I’m sorry to interrupt your work, but Chancellor Kane says John Murphy’s cleared and we should take him off your hands."

Murphy snorts when she turns her back on them, ignoring the implied request she let him leave without taking another look. He's entirely filthy; she hadn’t quite processed exactly how caked in blood and dirt he was in the heat of her anger, and the risks they all take going without keeping their various injuries clean push again to the forefront of her mind. "If you start to feel dizzy or experience swings from hot to cold, or your pain level increases, I want you to tell a guard. They'll tell me, and I'll have you transferred back here."

He rolls his eyes, giving the kind of nod that would have made sure the council sent him directly to the airlock after his review.

They live in a better world than that now, and Abby takes hold of his upper arm to give it a firm squeeze. He bridles at the contact, but doesn’t yank away. “I mean it, John. Promise me you’ll tell someone.”

His gaze darts between her and Byrne, measuring them both, then finally nods. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

It’s not the most rousing agreement but it’s going to have to do, and at her nod Byrne steers him away with a stiffly injured dignity that perfectly expresses how little she thinks of using any of their resources on her current charge.

Abby clears her throat, stopping Byrne by the door and drawing her attention back. “And tell Marcus I need to speak with him as soon as he has a moment if you could, major.”

Her spine snaps erect in affront but Byrne finally nods, offering the barest minimum of movement to be called agreement before sweeping out, outrage clear in the set of her shoulders.

“At least we’re all getting along.” David Miller waits until the rest of his team has left to speak up, expression guarded despite the attempt at humor. “Any word on the kids?”

“Nothing yet, but we’re going to head back out and search for them as soon as a team can be assembled.” Nathan will be with the others, Abby realizes with a little sting of guilt at how little she’d thought of anyone’s child but her own.

He exhales in obvious relief, features going slack. “Thank god.” Looking like she’s just released him from a terrible burden, he turns back to the door. “We’ll find them again, Abby. Both of them.”

“All of them.”

He tips his head and lifts his hand in a wordless goodbye before exiting at a half-jog to catch up with Byrne, and Abby watches him until he disappears around the edge of Alpha’s wreckage and the sunlight off silver makes her eyes start to water before turning back to Finn and his need for reassurances she can’t give.

 

 

* * *

 

The way greenery has already forced its way into metal, sunlight dappling grey and muting its stern edges gives the impression the Ark has always been here; or perhaps that it was meant to be here, that this patch of earth was created to cradle the ship and welcome them home.

The effect is entirely lost on Bellamy, who paces the length of the room with a barely contained purpose that makes Marcus begin to reassess how much the thoughtless young man who shot Thelonious had changed.

"How long are you gonna keep me locked up in here?" His body practically vibrates with hostility and frustration, and even if it’s makes him that much harder to deal with Marcus can’t help but be impressed by how determined he is in the face of overwhelming obstacle after overwhelming obstacle.

“Until I can trust that if I release under your own recognizance, you won’t assault someone else.” The young man bares his teeth in frustration and Marcus sighs, relaxing back into his chair and ignoring the twinge in his back. “So why don’t you sit down and give me some proof you can be trusted and then we can revisit the issue?”

Mutinously, Bellamy stares down at his feet before reaching some sort of internal breaking point, his shoulders lowering from their defensive posture around his ears as he raises his eyes to meet Marcus’ own. “How do I do that?”

“Take a seat and I’ll tell you.” Marcus wait until Bellamy finally sits to move on. “All right, let’s start with more information on the grounders. Olivera said you told Abby there were hundreds of them—was it two hundred? Three?”

“I didn’t exactly get them to stop and take a headcount.”

“Still—as things stand, your closest estimation is more than I know.”

“They attacked in waves, through the trees.” Bellamy’s lashes flutter down to hide his eyes, but it doesn’t conceal his shame. “I can’t tell you, Kane. I want to, but their tactics—”

“All right, I understand.” Disappointment courses through him, but Marcus pushes it aside. “Why do you think they attacked? Was there an instigating incident… something that might have provoked them?”

It’s a mild enough question, but Bellamy reacts like he’d reached across the space between them and slapped him. “We didn’t do anything to start this, we were just _here_. That’s all they needed from the day we landed. Look, all due respect, but you haven’t seen them in action and you don’t get it.” He’s deadly certain, a note of pleading underlying his anger, near-frantic with the need to impress upon Marcus how serious he is. “We’re wasting our time sitting here talking. The others wouldn’t leave without leaving some kind of sign, not unless they were _forced_. We need to go find them.”

Bellamy’s eyes hold nothing of the belligerent boy, leaving in his place a man Marcus can’t help but respect. “We’re getting a team ready now, but first I need to know everything you can tell me.”

“I have to be on that team.” He chokes back the last of his pride and lifts his hands from his lap, begging Marcus like a penitent might at the altar. “ _Please_ ,” his eyes dart down to the pin, “Chancellor.”

“Absolutely not.” Bellamy flinches, but Marcus pushes onward without letting his sympathy temper his assessment. “You're not trained. Even if you hadn't recently proved yourself a danger to others, I would never allow it.”

His eyes flash. “You sent ninety nine kids down here, alone, all of them without training. That wasn’t dangerous?”

It’s a point well-scored. Marcus feels the sick taste of regret push itself up in his throat, acrid and clinging, and inclines his head in acknowledgement. “I did, yes. All the same, you’re not alone now. And you won’t be going with the team, so it would be in everyone’s best interest if you told me what you know.”

“They’re my people, Kane.”

Ignoring the way Bellamy’s lapsed back into a sullen disregard for his title after the briefest moment of respect, Kane chances a comforting hand on his shoulder, squeezing the tense muscles and then shaking him gently. “They're my people too, Bellamy. If you want to help them, help _me_. I need numbers, tactics... What kind of weapons they used, any sort of protective gear…”

His jaw works in resigned frustration, exhaustion creeping in around the edges of his adrenaline. “They had on armor… metal welded together, maybe some leather, looked like it was whatever they can find. Wasn’t high tech, but it did the job.”

“And the weapons?”

“Arrows. Spears, axes, swords. Their _teeth_ if they got close enough.”

“But no guns.” Bellamy’s not going to be rendered any less recalcitrant by his next words, but they need to be said to understand how they lost so many lives in weeks after they found their way to the bunker and had a means to protect themselves from a culture operating with pre-industrial technology. “You had guns, Bellamy.”

“Yeah, but not fucking enough of them to do more but make us better at holding them off for a little bit.” He dips his head, lost in a memory that turns his face to stone. “And not enough ammo to make that last, either. Maybe if we’d had enough of each to go around it would’ve been different.”

He clearly believes the words, and something painful clutches in Marcus’ chest as he inhales and braces himself to reveal the truth. Life has not been kind to Bellamy Blake, and it seems all he can do is add to his burden. “There were more of both.”

Bellamy’s breath catches. “How many?”

“Bellamy—”

“ _How many_.”

The heartbreak and self-recrimination is naked on his face, but so is his determination to hear the full accounting of his sins. Marcus suffers another twinge of guilt at that familiar edge of masochistic guilt, but he deserves an honest answer. “One of our search teams returned two hours ago—they found barrels with two dozen or so more rifles between them, and another full of ammunition.”

He shudders, head hanging down. “Three. I missed three of them.”

“Bellamy…”

“I should have looked harder.”

It’s not untrue, but saying so would be too unkind for either of them to bear. Torn between comforting Bellamy and swiftly moving forward to save them both the embarrassment of him trying, the stumble-shuffle of someone being shoved through the door feels like divine intervention.

“Careful, you heard what the doctor said. You break it, you gotta bring it back to center distribution yourself.” The lighting throws his bruises into even starker effect, Murphy’s already vulpine features taking on an even less savory feel thanks to the battering.

Masking his relief at such a heavy moment thwarted before he’s sure how to handle it, Marcus ignores him and quirks an eyebrow at Byrne. “Everything all right, Major?”

“Fine.” Her tight expression makes it something of an obvious lie, as does the way her charge was clearly shoved into the room, but it’s a formality of rank, not a lie anyone in the room needs to believe. Byrne’s belief in the system is a comforting reminder of why he’s here. “Dr. Griffin said when you have a moment, she’d like to see you.”

Judging by her sour look Abby wasn’t quite so unassuming about it, so Marcus simply stands and moves on with business. “Put him over there, if you would.” He nods to the wall across from Bellamy, watching all the careful intelligence he’d exhibited drain from his eyes as he clearly weighs making a lunge for Murphy here and now. “Him too.”

The young man in question shoots him a betrayed look as the guard puts him on his knees and zipties his wrists again, but Marcus just looks meaningfully at Murphy then back at Bellamy, gaze level. _Prove it_ , he’d said, and here came another chance to do so.

From his spot on the floor, Murphy laughs quietly, an unsettling sound that makes the hair on the back of Marcus’ neck stand up. “Just you and me again, Bellamy. Too bad it’s a little less fun for me, this time.” It has to be admitted he’s asking much more of Bellamy with Murphy than he had even by gathering intel and denying him a chance to see what they’d do with it. Whatever had passed between them to end in a girl shot and an attempted hanging, Murphy seemed determined to keep it ever-present.

Bellamy grinds his teeth and then locks eyes with Marcus again and slowly nods, turning to give Murphy nothing more than his profile and stony silence. Murphy laughs again in response, and a muscle tightens in Bellamy’s neck.

Gunshots break their standoff, sounding out rapidfire from outside. The boys only exist as periphery detail, all his focus concentrated on the sound of a rifle going off. It’s one of theirs; the other children might be making their way back, or the grounders are testing their perimeter. When he takes off at a run, Byrne follows him and thrusts a rifle into his hands as they go.

A member of the guard he doesn’t recognize clutches his weapon with trembling hands, eyes wide with panic and pinned to the treeline. Byrne takes him by the arm, breaking his trance. “What was it? What did you see?”

“They were moving!” He pants, wrenching out of her grasp and raising one finger to jab wildly at nothing but green and Marcus realizes he’s not a member of the guard at all, but one of Sinclair’s engineers. “Right there, I saw them.”

“How many?” Marcus feels his own breath begin to come faster. “What did they look like?”

“I don’t know, sir, I just saw something move.” Marcus curses under his breath, anger clear, and the man looks beseechingly at Byrne. “I swear, I saw movement.”

“And you started _shooting_ before you found out what it was?” God _damnit_. The last thing this situation needs is Abigail Griffin worked up to a righteous fury, but here she is, hair streaming behind her like a banner as she advances on them. “That could have been the kids!”

She pushes past him, clearly intent on investigating where the man had aimed his fire on her own, and Marcus takes hold of her wrist. “Abby. Abby, no.” She yanks at his grip and he tightens it, shaking her once, sharply like a terrier with a rat. “ _No_. We’ll send a team out to do a sweep once I get this mess settled, but I need you to let me do my job.” They hold gazes until Abby gives a short nod. “All right.” Byrne’s hapless quarry starts to go white when Marcus transfers his attention back to them. “Who issued you this weapon?”

Byrne swallows audibly, jaw working in obvious consternation and Marcus knows the answer before she gives it. “I did, sir.”

“I see.” She takes the weapon from the man and hands it to him, lips pinned together in shame, and he pushes back the urge to dress her down in public for the choice. “From now on, Major, only members of the guard carry guns.” The tension in the crowd hasn’t dissipated, and Marcus raises his voice loud enough it can carry across the uneasy mass. “Anyone caught with a firearm they aren't authorized to use will is in violation of the Exodus Charter, and will be sentenced accordingly. Is that understood?”

A quiet chorus of ‘yessirs’ isn’t the kind of response that will settle his nerves over the contents of their armory falling into the wrong hands, but it’s enough for now. People drift back to their work in anxious groups of two and three and four and Marcus exhales in a loud burst. Fearful people can become angry people who can morph into a mob in the blink of an eye, and they can ill-afford it now. Not when they have enemies enough outside their still incomplete walls.

“Marcus.” Abby’s slender fingers close around his wrist, shaking him just like he’d done to her. “Search the damn woods.”

There’s concern in Byrne’s expression when Marcus barks out Abby’s order as his own, but they both know he’d make the same choice regardless of what Abby thought about it. With a crisp nod, she peels away with her squad, shout orders and raising her rifle to the ready as they step past the clearly marked boundaries of what they’ve claimed as theirs and into land that clearly belongs to the grounders if it belongs to anyone at all.

Beside him, Abby whirls to turn her back to on their progress away from camp, fists clenched at her side in obvious anguish. She’ll wonder until they return if that was Clarke in those woods, he realizes, settling another another layer of fear atop the rest.

Every step away from camp taken by feet that aren’t her own is a knife in the heart. This is what he’s asked of her, when he barely understands himself what it means to love someone so completely, to be so utterly without boundaries… It’s humbling, the weight she can bear up under.

“Abby.” He reaches for her without thinking and she stumbles backwards, chin trembling with the effort of appearing calm for everyone still attentively watching.

“I need to…” She pauses, sucking in a fortifying breath. “I need to get back to work. Let me know what they find.”

 

* * *

 

Fleeing from the depth of emotion shining in Marcus’ eyes is the act of a coward, but Abby can’t stay, not when there’s no room yet to fall apart. Raven is here; Clarke is not. She can only do anything to help one of them.

That doesn’t stop her from picturing in perfect detail what a bullet might do to her daughter, that Byrne and her team are racing towards an inevitable conclusion and she’s seen Raven cheat death only to find Clarke…

She turns from finishing the thought, nodding sightless greeting at her patients and well-wishers clustered near them in quietly murmuring groups, sending up an unanswered prayer Raven is still asleep and she can put off telling her the truth until she’s had a moment to breathe.

“She’s awake, Abby.” Finn’s smile nearly obscures the fear in his eyes, and Abby nods in acknowledgement, testing the clammy skin of Raven’s forehead with the back of her hand and then, unable to help herself, smoothing back her hair like she used to do for Clarke.

“Hey, honey.” Raven leans her forehead against Abby’s palm, and that small gesture of heedless vulnerability from a young woman determined to stand entirely alone says more than words can about the pain she’s in. “How are you feeling?”

Consciousness only emphasizes what had been obvious but blunted while she was barely awake: the pain Raven’s in is considerable, and she’s been in it for too long to hope there isn’t _some_ sort of lingering damage. Guilt swamps her in an ugly wave at the clearest evidence yet of the unintended consequences choices she’s made have had for the people around her. If she had asked Sinclair for his help instead and or gone to earth herself, would Raven be hovering between two fates that each carry their own painful downsides?

Unaware of Abby’s inner turmoil, Raven tries for a cocky smile and only manages to accomplish sickly. “Me? I’m doing great.”

“She’s lying.” Finn looks pale himself under all the grime caked on each piece of available skin, but his voice is strong and his smile returns whenever he glances at Raven. “She asked me to knock her out with a rock a couple minutes ago.”

“Jesus, Finn, I was _kidding_.” History spins out between them, the kind of connection you can only forge with years of shared experience. As the bearer of bad news she’s holding them both in the palm of her hand, and the realization pummels her. Raven’s eyes narrow, and she abandons her fake spat. “I know that face. Abby, whatever it is just say it. I can handle the truth.”

“Raven—”

“Abby.”

Inhaling, Abby braces herself to help Raven cross the bridge into her new reality. “You’re in pain because the bullet is still shifting. I had hoped it would stabilize before now.”

“Can you still take it out if it’s moving?”

“Yes, but—”

“So do it.”

“Raven, there are significant risks involved with attempting to remove the bullet.” Professionalism is hard to maintain in the face of Raven’s poorly concealed fear, and Abby hates the hitch in her voice as much as she can’t stop it. “Right now it’s pressing on your spine—if we leave it in you’ll live, but you’ll never walk again.”

“So. Take. It. Out,” Raven spits the words like projectiles, struggling to rise up on her elbows and stare Abby down before giving in with an impotent growl and doing the same flat on her back. “I want it out.”

“The surgery could kill you.” Raven blanches at the force in her voice and Abby sighs quietly, wishing she could relieve her of the need to make an informed choice. “Our equipment is useless without power, and we don’t have any anesthesia to give you.”

“But I’ll walk again?”

“Maybe, but sweetheart… you’d be awake the whole time. And you’d feel everything.”

“So what? Do it anyway. I can suck it up.” Bravado barely in place, Raven shrugs and then swallows a gasp of pain.

“Raven, you’re going to respond to the pain regardless, and this is delicate work. If you move when I’m not expecting it, I could cut too deep and damage your spine beyond repair.”

“So strap me down first.”

Abby feels tears rise, thickening her voice. “Raven…”

“Strap me down and let’s do this, okay? We’re wasting time talking about it.” She lifts her chin, imperious even as fine tremors render her back down to the limitations of her frame. “It’s my body and I’ve made up my mind. I want you to take it out.”

“You could die.” Finn gulps down air in a short burst, eyes shining with fear. “Abby said…”

“ _Could_ die, Finn. If she doesn’t try I’m never gonna walk again.”

“At least you’d be alive.”

“Finn…” Raven shakes her head, bruises under her eyes so blue they’re almost black, giving her the look of someone already a foot in the grave and chilling Abby’s heart. “In zero g, you don’t need your legs to be worth something as a mechanic. Down here if I can’t walk I can’t work. I can’t protect myself.” She looks back at Abby, near tears. “Take it out, Abby, please. I need my legs, you know I do.”

Abby nods once and leaves them alone to prepare, tears still stinging at the back of her eyelids when she goes to tell Jackson she’ll need him to assist.

 

* * *

 

There’s no need to wonder when Abby starts her work; Raven screams once, then twice, and again and again and again until his ears ring with the sound like church bells. Each piercing shriek is a reminder of what Bellamy had said: he’d failed to believe the children would survive landfall, let alone need to defend themselves afterwards. If he’d been willing to accept the loss of a dozen guns maybe half the children he’d sent down wouldn’t be dead, and the other half missing. Even the most basic means of self-defense might have spared Raven this kind of pain.

“Chancellor?” Byrne breaks into his cycle of self-recrimination, saving him from himself for the second time that day. “Sir, I’ve sent out word for a small squad to gather now to sweep the woods. A larger one will leave later to look for the kids, once the last patrol we sent out this morning comes back.”

“When do we expect them?”

“Not for another hour or so, sir, it was Campbell and his squad and they were looking for the best sources of water nearby.” He nods, expecting her to fall into her customary professional silence; instead she inhales, lips thinning into near invisibility. “Sir, I wanted to apologize about earlier. Chajkowski was on the guard for years, and he could still hit a target.” For a taciturn woman like Byrne, this much explanation for her actions may as well be wringing her hands and begging his pardon. “I thought we needed all the able hands we had.”

“It’s all right, major, so long as it doesn’t happen again.” She nods, sharp chin cutting an emphatic slash through the air. “You weren’t wrong, but we’ll work on expanding our ranks later. For now, we build up our defenses and make do with the members of the guard we have.”

“People are restless. The girl doesn’t help.” Byrne glances over at the tent keeping Raven’s screams slightly muffled. “Did Dr. Griffin say how long she’d be in surgery?”

“As long as it takes, I imagine.”

Unspoken admonishment understood, Byrne turns the conversation away from Abby and her patients and at the rest of their people, working in concentrated effort to pull a fence together. “We’ll need to feed them soon. People are getting by on what we handed out before we left, but the rest of the stores need to be divided and then we need to go looking for more.”

Another vital task to add to his already endless list. The chancellor’s pin may as well be a boulder for all the weight it adds to his shoulders. He bobs a quick, tired nod. “Problems for tomorrow, Major.”

Her lips quirk almost imperceptibly in a show of sympathetic humor. “One of many.” Her gaze refocuses and sharpens beyond his shoulder, command stretching her taller than she already is. “Come on, Valdez! Bring it in, we’re wasting daylight.”

The scream that breaks the silence and drowns out the tail end of Byrne’s order is lower pitched than the ones they’ve been hearing, and Marcus frowns in confusion. “Who was that?”

Another scream sounds out, this one louder and more drawn out, and then another, then another, joining Raven’s higher pitched sounds of anguish in a deafening cacophony that curdles his blood.

“Sir, it’s sounds like it’s coming from north of our position.” Seeing his confusion, she hastens to add, face twisting in anxiety, “Campbell’s team was set to return from the north.”

The team takes off at a run as one. There’s no time to enjoy the woods now, the same trees Abby had turned into a game presenting a potential threat and a limitation he has the enemy doesn’t. Some of the older men fall behind, but Byrne keeps pace at his side as they race towards the source of the screaming.

When they find it, it takes a moment for the men on the trees to become men in his mind’s eye. The sheer impossibility of people he’d sworn to protect posed grotesquely still against the rough bark breaks their bodies down into shapes; the bend of an elbow merely an angle, the slack weight of their bodies only so much filled space.

Then Campbell moves and they’re men again. “He’s alive! Byrne, give me your knife. We need to cut him down.” Marcus feels his gorge rise, and ruthlessly pushes the need to retch back. There’s no time for disgust when whoever did this could be just around the next tree. Getting to work on sawing their only witness to what happened down, he gestures impatiently with his free hand. “Get the others.”

“Sir, what if…”

“I said, _get the others_. Byrne, his wrist.” She snaps to action and cradles the wrist he’s already freed so the poor man doesn’t fall as he make quick work of the other. “We don’t leave any of them behind. Valdez, help me with Campbell. Byrne, you take the others. And be sure to watch for grounders, I don’t trust that this isn’t a trap.”

Bearing bodies back to camp takes much longer than running breakneck towards them entirely unencumbered, and by the time they reach the still-growing fence Raven surgery seems to be over; no one’s attention is trained on the medical tent any longer, at the very least.

He hastens his steps, approaching the threshold into Abby’s world at a half-jog. It’s no less chaotic than outside, but it’s _hers_ and somehow that makes the air within its sloped walls feel sheltering, not smothering, even in the sticky heat of the afternoon. He needs that, after listening to the labored sounds of Campbell’s breath dimming into nothing on the walk back, before he could even regain consciousness and tell them what _happened_.

Jackson narrows his eyes in reflexive disapproval but waves Marcus on, pointing wordlessly towards a smaller area separated from the rest of the crowd by hanging strips of plastic. Abby’s back stiffens and then relaxes as he enters, and after a moment he takes the movement as all the acknowledgement of his presence she’s going to give him. “How is she?”

“Well, she survived the surgery.” With her back still to him, Abby sets to rinsing her hands in a small basin. “Don’t ask me how, but she did. She’s a resilient kid.”

“If there’s one thing these kids have on their side it’s resilience. Bellamy won’t stop asking when he can get back out there.” He thinks wryly of the arrogant tilt to Bellamy’s chin, the steadfast assumption Marcus was wrong and if he’d only _listen_ , he would see that doing exactly what Bellamy wanted to do was the only acceptable course of action. There’s a core of similarity there, a shared fire with the woman in front of him that he can’t help but admire in both people.

Like an animal scenting the air with a predator near, Abby stills and lifts her head, finally turning to face him. “That’s understandable, isn’t it?” She knows. He hasn’t given her a sign but somehow she _knows_ , and the hesitance in her words carries the initial shock of a dawning awareness. “He wants to help you find his friends.”

He’d give anything to promise her she’s wrong, and that he’s not asking her to suffer another round of knives and do nothing to deflect them but there’s nothing he can give, nothing but the truth and the decency to do it fast. “We all want to bring the kids back, but we can’t do it without a plan or a clear idea of what we're going to find along with them.”

“There was no search team, was there? You never…” Her lips part in shock and she stares up at him in mute horror, begging him with no words to tell her she’s wrong.

It’s a comfort he can’t give her. “I intended to, but those men were crucified.” She opens her mouth to reply and he shakes his head, stepping closer and trying to make her understand. “I said they _crucified_ them, Abby. That was a warning about what they can do, and I intend to take that warning seriously.”

“That’s why we need to go after the kids! You can’t expect me to just stay here and wait if you’re not even _trying_ to bring them home—”

“Campbell was alive when we found him. They killed the others, but they left him for us to find and he died before we could bring him here. Bring him to _you_.” Abby’s wordless denial of the truth comes out in a near-growl, a sure sign his barb reached its intended target. “I’m trying as best I can to take care of all our people, Abby, but we need to concentrate on the people we can help right now.” He draws in a frustrated breath, struggling to make her understand it’s not that he doesn’t want to find Clarke, it’s that he knows right now he _can’t_. “I know you care about her, but you have to think about the bigger picture. We’ll find your daughter, Abby, but we can’t do it if we don’t have somewhere safe waiting for her.” She makes a soft, pained sound, and he brings a hand up to cup her cheek, stroking the soft skin with his thumb. “You have my word, once this camp is secured we’ll send out teams until one of them brings the kids home. I’ll find her for you as soon as I can, Abby, you have to believe me.”

“They tortured John Murphy and poisoned Finn Collins.” She fists a hand in his shirt, knuckles thumping into his side to emphasize each word. “They put a spear through Jasper Jordan's chest and left him to die. We can't wait to look for them, or there won’t be anything to find.”

Shame floods him, but he refuses to look away first. “You don’t know that.”

“Neither do you!” Breathing harshly, Abby blinks back tears and stares up at him. Pressed this close he can feel the tremors wracking her delicate frame, reminding him how small she really is. “Marcus… please. Please, don’t do this. Don’t ask me to leave my daughter’s survival up to chance.”

She had looked at him like hero when he’d brought her the news Jackson survived the landing. Losing that regard is as painful as admitting to himself that she’s right, at least on one point; neither of them know how the kids are, or where they are, or what it’s going to cost to bring them back. Waiting might mean the difference between forty eight children living and dying, but waiting means a better chance the several hundred people they can protect right now now stay protected.

“I’m sorry. I’ve made my decision.” Her expressive face shutters, and she steps away from his hand and gives him her back again, shoulders hunched in as if he’s hit her. Taking a step forward, his hand rises to try and comfort her the only way she’s taught him how. “Abby, I don’t…”

“Get out.”

Her voice is low and choked through tears or rage or both, and Marcus thinks better of offering that comfort. Helpless, he hovers close enough to touch and still too far away to do anything for her. “Abby...”

“I said get _out_ , Marcus. I need to concentrate on the people I can help right now.”

Hearing his own words flung back like they taste foul makes him feel like the last month was a dream and they’ve woken up again on opposite sides of the council table. Regret is bitter on his own tongue when he murmurs a goodbye, and he makes sure to avoid Jackson’s eyes on the way out.

 

* * *

 

Raven’s awake before Abby can do much more than compose herself, and the tears coursing down her face after they run sensation tests is too much to watch and keep that thinly applied composure in place. It’s unfair to leave a child alone to bear the weight of her pain, even one who’s known Raven all his life, but she can’t stay.

Jackson stops her by the door, pulling her out a side exit and into a tiny alcove between the tent and Alpha’s broadest side, the tiny bubble of calm _exactly_ what she needs. Sucking in badly needed fresh air, Abby gives him a grateful smile.

“Even you need to stop sometimes.” He pats her shoulder, and all over again Abby is amazed that the frightened child she’d taken under her wing had grown into a man possessed of an instinctively boundless kindness she can’t pretend she taught him or can lay claim to herself. “How is she?”

“Her right leg seems largely undamaged, I won’t know more until we can run some tests. The left...”

He squeezes her sympathetically. “How bad is it?”

“She’s going to spend the rest of her life favoring that leg.” Saying it out loud drives home how unfair it is that someone as young and vital as Raven will have to suffer through the necessary twin processes of healing and adapting. “And that’s if she can walk at all, we’ll have to see how recovery goes.”

“You did your best, Abby. It’s a miracle she survived surgery at all, you know that.”

“It still wasn’t enough.”

Jackson’ face goes slack with sadness, and just as he opens his mouth to say the things she knows but can’t accept in her heart about the job they do Finn pokes his head out of the tent, brow knit together.

“Hey, Abby, can I talk to you for a second?”

She looks to Jackson, and he nods. “Go, I’ll take care of things. You need a break, anyway. Why don’t you guys go for a walk? I’ll check in on Raven, see if she wants some water.”

The blue of the sky is blinding, almost white around the edges in its intensity, but Abby can’t enjoy it with Finn radiating misery and so obviously wanting to speak but not knowing how beside her.

She steers them around groups, taking a wide path to make sure when he’s ready no one will overhear them.

Finally, Finn breaks the silence. “Is she going to get better?” He hesitates even as he releases the trapped words, like he doesn’t want to know the answer if it’s not yes but can’t bear not to ask the question.

Abby wishes with all her heart she could offer him more than the truth. “I don’t know, Finn.”

He coughs, coming to a stop and turning his face up to the sky and squinting at the sun. “But will she be okay, even if she can’t feel her leg anymore?”

“I don’t know that either, Finn.” A woman thirty yards or so notices Abby and turns to make a beeline for her until Abby catches her eye and shakes her head, pointing to the med tent firmly. Finn’s pain is going to be public right now no matter what they do, but the least she can do is spare him anything but the most general witnesses. “She’s lucky to have someone like you by her side.”

He looks down, blinking hard and looking confused. “I’m not. I mean, I’m here for her not matter what, but we’re not like that.”

Abby pauses, genuinely surprised. “But when we were working on the escape pod, I thought she said…”

“Oh yeah, well. We were like that, but then I fu-screwed up.” He picks at a scab near his elbow, not meeting her eyes. “I cheated on her.”

“...Oh.”

“Yeah, I know. A guy who has someone like Raven and even looks at anybody else is pretty stupid, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know, you didn’t have to. It’s just the truth.” He looks towards the canvas walls sheltering a still-sleeping Raven, eyes sad. “She’s always been like that, you know. So strong you don’t know how she keeps doing it.”

“So what happened?”

“I went to the skybox, and she didn’t, and then I thought we’d never see each other again…” He looks down again, shamefaced. “And I met somebody who shouldn’t exist, somebody just as special as Raven.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“No.” He laughs, but it’s not amused. “No, trust me, you do.”

It takes a moment to fit his insistence into place, and the obvious conclusion tears her heart out for all of them. He’s a thoughtless child, but he’s a _child_ , and he loves Raven too much to think he’d hurt her by design.

“We’ll find her.” She rests a hand on his shoulder. “And Raven will heal.”

He nods, then stands like he can’t bear to be touched with kindness. “She wants me to go find them. Clarke, and everybody else. She said I needed to be gone when she woke up, that you’d help me.”

“Finn…”

“Abby, _please_. I let her down. I let both of them down, and now I can make it right.” His voice cracks on a pained sob. “Help me do this. Help me save them.”

“All right, just… let me think.” She inhales, deeply. “You’re going to need guns.”

Jackson peers at her in confusion when she returns alone, scanning the camp behind her in mild alarm. “Where’s Finn? Is he all right?”

“Mmm,” she hums noncommittally, “he said Raven asked him to do something for her. I’m sure he’ll be back later.”

He looks unconvinced, but after a moment he slowly nods. “All right. Hey, why don’t I take over tonight? At least for part of the night, that way you can get a couple hours of sleep at some point.”

Now it’s Abby’s turn to be confused. He has to know she won’t leave to sleep until her body forces sleep on her, not when things are as tenuously peaceful as they are. “You don’t have to do that.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll say you’re just in the next room working on a patient if anyone comes and asks for you.” His eyes are fixed on hers and bright, warning her not to argue. “You deserve to have a couple hours with nobody looking over your shoulder, right? Just… say yes, okay? Let me cover for you.”

“You don’t need to do that—”

“Abby.” Inexplicably he smiles, warm and a little exasperated like between the two of them, _he’s_ the parent.

“What.”

Still smiling affectionately, he rolls his eyes. “I know.”

Her heart stops. If she’s already _this_ obvious, what chance does she have of successfully stealing the guns and sneaking them out of camp once Finn’s released Bellamy from his cell? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you, Abby, and in one day I’ve seen enough of those kids to know they’re not going to sit around while their friends are missing.”

“Jackson…”

“No, Abby. On the Ark, I didn’t know what was going on with the pod and it meant I couldn’t stall for you when Kane asked me what you were doing. I don’t need the details, but I love Clarke too. Let me help.”

Her breath catches, and then starts again in a relieved gust. Grabbing Jackson in a tight hug, she buries her face in his shoulder and reminds herself not to lose sight of the people who matter outside of Clarke.

“I’d have to have a plan to share any details about it.” He laughs with her, and the release in tension does wonders to help clear her head. “Thank you, Jackson. I’m going to keep working until it gets dark, then I’ll take you up on that offer.”

 

* * *

 

Abby had said to come see her later, but not quite _when_ that later might be, or if she considered their time together as colleagues and not lovers the same as their time alone. The memory of her face crumpling, strength wilting under the weight of the latest thing he’s asked of her means he doesn’t care enough about the subtleties to respect her grief and leave her alone. He keeps a close eye on medical throughout the evening, never quite hovering but always aware of where she is.

The chancellor had been required earlier, but he hold out hope she’ll hear from _Marcus_. The chancellor had a choice to make, but Marcus would leave and find her daughter alone if he thought he could do it. Splitting the difference between the two halves of himself is driving him mad, and he needs her to say she understands that none of it is what he wants.

Once she leaves the tent he waits ten minutes to lend plausibility to the idea of coincidence, then knocks on her door.

“Abby?” Nothing answers him inside the room but stillness, and he knocks again, a formless worry beginning to build. “Abby, are you all right?”

 _Assume_ , she’d told him, those deft capable hands he’s spent hours admiring stroking the beard beginning to obscure his jawline with the kind of tenderness he’d never imagined anyone would show him. _It’s not rude when you’re wanted._

The door rattles when he attempts to push it open, but stays stuck in place. He tries again, then one last time, wrenching until the metal dents his fingertips.

He lowers a hand that’s made itself into a fist of its own volition by degrees, shock making the air sticky as the sap that clung to the stakes pinning Campbell and his squad to the tree. He struggles to understand what’s happened with a mind gone numb. Abby told him to assume where he was wanted, and so he had; but her door is locked, a firm rejection of that assumption.

Unbidden, her stricken face when she’d begged him to send the patrol despite the risks floats back into his mind, the naked pleading rendering her features almost Sisyphean in hindsight.

If her daughter dies, Abby will never forgive him.

“I’m sorry.” The pockmarked face of her door is a poor substitute for her own, but Marcus can’t make himself walk away. “I swear to you, Abby, this isn’t what I _want_ , it’s what I have to do.” The silence on the other side continues, and he curses himself as ten kinds of a fool. “We’ll find her, you just have to wait a little bit longer.” There’s a sound just beyond the door he’d like to interpret as movement towards him, but after a few breathless moments of waiting the door stays firmly locked against him and the woman inside too angry to respond. “Good night, Abby. I am truly am sorry.”

Each step he takes away from her door feels is if they’re taken through muck, resistance clinging to his legs and begging him to stay in place. Hurt keeps him going, hurt and the promise of more in the future. No one had known Callie spent most of her nights in his quarters rather than her own, which meant no one had known the difference it made in his life when that stopped. Even if they’d managed to keep things firmly in the realm of rumor on the Ark, everyone who travelled to camp with them knows they truth now. They’ll notice that things have changed, and they won’t wonder what pretty, well-liked Doctor Griffin did—they’ll know that he was at fault, that he’d been offered a gift he’d spent life barely able to admit he wanted only to cast it into the dirt.

His steps lengthen, eating up ground faster and faster, carrying him farther away from Abby and her locked door and her terrible silence and back into himself.

 

* * *

 

Marcus’ defeated goodbye is still ringing in her ears as Abby makes her way to the lean-to functioning as their armory, weighing down her steps and making the soft sounds of her boots on gravel into an accusatory song.

She’s too busy listening to it, eyes trained on the goal just a few scant yards away, to notice the hand reaching for her until it clamps down on her elbow.

“Abby. Little late for a walk, don’t you think?” David Miller’s familiar burr eases her nerves enough to keep her from bringing an elbow back and planting it in the stomach of anybody who thinks they’re getting between Abby and her child. Before she can reply, he stiffens and yanks her back, into the shadows of the armory and out of the eyeline of a passing guard detail.

“Why did you do that?” Abby whispers, long after the sound of the footsteps fade away, conscious of the risk of being caught more now than ever. “David…”

“You were going for the guns. Don’t deny it, I know you were.” Warily, she nods a quick confirmation, and his grim smile does nothing to lessen the intensity in his eyes. “You’re going to get them, aren’t you? Our kids.” She nods again, and he lets go of her arm, turning to open the armory door. “Then I’m coming with you.”

Finn meets them at the treeline with Bellamy in tow, flanked by sharp eyed little Monroe and her affable blond shadow. Murphy’s carefully positioned in the middle of them all, hands still bound.

“Bellamy, why did you bring—”

He waves the question off before she can finish asking it, shrugging and looking at Murphy with ill-disguised contempt. “He’s the only one who knows how to get where we’re going.”

He must have earned his older wounds at their camp and not on the battlefield, Abby realizes, and her fear she’s sending children out to do a job meant for the guard lessens slightly. Children they may be, but they’ve survived this long, and one of them had already thought of something she hadn’t.

“You’re late.” David Miller cranes his head to study the path they’d taken from camp. “Did anyone follow you?”

“No, we were careful.” The cheerful blond flashes them a thumbs up, somehow unbothered by the danger they’re all in, white teeth shining in the darkness. “Monroe and I made sure we got out clear.”

Abby looks to Bellamy for confirmation, and he nods. “They’re good scouts, and I thought it was worth taking a couple minutes if it meant bringing along the only guy who’s been to where they keep their POWs before.”

“I’m glad you thought of it, because I didn’t. Here, you’ll need these, too.” Handing over the guns makes what they’re doing real, but Abby shoves away the stab of panic in favor of making sure the kids are at least armed and able to face the danger she’s sending them out into.

Bellamy takes the handguns and passes them to Sterling and Finn, keeping the larger weapons David brought for himself and Monroe. They all handle them with confidence, she notes, and Bellamy seems to grow taller as the metal warms to his palm, gaining strength from it.

“I want to see those back in good working condition, trainee Blake.” David’s smile is no stronger than Bellamy’s chuckle, but even that bit of normalcy seems to settle them both. “You know my son Nathan? If he’s still alive?” Bellamy nods in affirmation to each question, and David’s breath comes out in a relieved rush. “Find him, bring him back.”

Nodding a goodbye, Bellamy turns on his heel with ill-concealed eagerness to be off, the others following close at his heels. Murphy spits out something about his hands and Abby’s conscience twitches. “Bellamy.”

He stops the group with a quick gesture of his hand and turns back to face her. “Yeah?”

“I don’t care what he did, John is still my patient. I’m only turning him over to your care temporarily.”

Murphy scoffs and breaks into the conversation for the first time, mouth twisted in a bitter grin. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure he’ll be _real_ careful with me.”

Abby ignores him. “I expect you to do your best to bring _everyone_ back, Bellamy.” She’s putting their lives on the line and she won’t add to the shadows in his eyes by demanding he swear oaths he can’t uphold, but if Murphy goes with them she needs a guarantee it isn’t sending him to an execution she could have prevented by bringing him back inside now. “Can you promise me that?”

Bellamy blinks rapidly like a man trying to wake from a nightmare, then dips his head in a nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I promise.”

“Then good luck. All of you.”

He leads them away and ones by one they fade into the deep woods with sure footing, the lack of moonlight to illuminate the path no object. By silent agreement, Abby and David wait to be sure they won’t come back before turning away themselves. As they begin walk back, it strikes Abby that whole thing has been almost shockingly easy; to steal the guns, to meet the kids, to watch them leave and so far to return without being spotted by any of the squads positioned throughout the edges of the woods.

When he finds out, Marcus is going to be just as furious about the failure in Camp Jaha’s budding security forces as he is by her betrayal.

“You sure about this? I thought we’d be leaving with them.” David scratches absently at the wiry beard slowly growing in on his cheeks, worry clear in his voice as he keeps his eyes on the ground for anything that might trip them up and ruin what’s been an uncannily perfect escape.

“We’d be missed before morning, and like it or not I can’t leave Jackson to cover medical alone and you’re needed on the guard. We don’t have enough people as it is.”

He concedes the point with a begrudging grunt, rubbing a hand over his face and looking like he’s aged decades since they left camp with the guns. “Five kids, and one of them in cuffs.”

“I trust Bellamy.” She had seen the light in his eyes when he talked about Clarke, the fervor that swore he’d do as much to find her daughter as was humanly possible, and that he’d rather stay behind himself than leave any of the rest when he does. “He’ll find them, David. Both of them.”

“All of them.” Slight smile touching his lips, he repeats her words from earlier, resting a hand on her shoulder in a silent goodbye and breaking off before they exit the treeline, to give their cover stories more plausibility if anyone catches them crossing the open field between woods and makeshift fencing.

The smartest choice right now would be to take advantage of Marcus’ giving in and spend some time in medical to help reinforce the impression she had nothing to do with the guns as long as possible, and the _last_ thing she ought to do is give him a reason to suspect her.

Still, once someone brought the news about the guns and the missing prisoners to Byrne she’d rush to Marcus, and he was far from naive enough to think she hadn’t played a role. He’d given his orders in front of all the collected survivors, and it hadn’t even taken her a day to flout it; there would be no keeping this one secret. Marcus only inherited the pin, and people will inevitably remember the culling more than his heroism afterwards as their stomachs start to growl.

She’s making an already precarious situation worse and flaunting her rebellion, even if it is a side consequence to her goal. The guard will talk and the people they tell will talk and by mid-afternoon everyone will know how simple it is to ignore his commands. It’s not something he’ll forgive her for easily, if he forgives her at all.

She hesitates at his door, fist raised to knock; then she waits, hovering midway between intent and action, torn between selfish desire and shame.

Marcus makes her choice for her, pulling the door open with the kind of brittle air that says her rejection cut to where he’s most vulnerable and carved new furrows through well-traversed ground. Then his eyes meet her face and go wide, then soft, and his throat works in a noisy swallow. “Abby?”

“Marcus, I—”

He tugs her through the doorway and into his arms, slamming it shut with a shove that rattles it to the bolts. “I’m sorry.” He murmurs the words into her hair, tip of his nose brushing her ear. “Abby, I know—”

She can’t bear to hear him apologize when she owes him one too and can’t give it. With a flush and shame and arousal she slips her hand under his waistband, cupping the growing length of his cock in her palm. Marcus’ words peter out into loud panting and he rests his forehead against her shoulder, hips thrusting into her hand. The angle makes her wrist ache but he shakes and sighs against her like this is the first time anyone else has done this for him and she ignores the pain and concentrates on the rasp of his beard against her cheek and the heavy weight of his balls brushing against her fingertips, the throaty little _oh_ he chokes out when she rubs the pad of her thumb in small circles over the sensitive bundle of nerves at the tip of his cock; each is a detail that can be catalogued and filed away if this is the last time she sees him like this.

She doesn’t remember her last day with Jake in detail, or the last time time they’d made love; she’d been so arrogant, so _thoughtless_ , too sure Thelonious would spare his friend and her husband to bother etching the smallest details in her mind.

So while she remembers it, she can’t replay it the way she wants to. Where had he kissed her, and how, and had they said I love you or trusted that they’d have a lifetime of chances to say it again? Those questions haunted her as Jake slowly became more and more a creature consigned to memory and noted by a lack of presence, and now she’s condemning Marcus to that same fate because she can’t wait until he’s ready to find Clarke at the same time she can’t let him go without one last time together.

It’s selfish and he’s going to be right to be furious when he finds out, but pressed this close, feeling his heartbeat thunder against her, she can’t force herself to regret it.

“Marcus.” She kisses the top of his head, nosing at a tiny starburst of grey in tawny brown. “Marcus, I want you.”

He bears her back to the unmade bed with graceless need, clumsy hands yanking at her pants and satisfying himself with working them down to her thighs before he hunches into her, making her hiss in mild discomfort when the pressure of his broad cock meets resistance. He stutters out an apology and makes to roll off her, but Abby wraps her arms around his back and fists both hands in the fabric of his shirt, making movement impossible unless he plans to move her, too. “It’s all right, I’m fine. Just give me a second to relax and get used to you.”

“Are you sure?” His face is open and joyful and it feels like an accusation so Abby just nods and pulls him down to kiss her, ignoring the stab of guilt that says he’ll replay this night a thousand times in his mind, wondering if she meant any of it and luxuriating in the feel of him instead, the weight of his body over her own and his cock between her legs, all of him taut and strong and so wonderfully big. She squeezes around him and he moans, muscles jumping with restrained need to thrust into her. “Can I move? Abby, tell me I can—”

“It’s all right.” She strokes her hands over the sweat drenched shirt clinging to his back, down until she can cup his bare ass and pull him into her. “You feel good, Marcus, so good.”

His ass clenches and releases in time with the push of his cock into her body, velvet skin going slippery under her hand as their bodies rock together. He mutters low, sweet words in her ear, confessions she blurs into so much sweet noise to keep from weeping and breaking the spell.

Her orgasm is a surprise; when his thrusts shorten and start to lose coordination in a way Abby recognizes as the first signal he’s going to come Marcus works a hand between them to bring her along and Abby thinks _I can’t possibly be ready_ with startling clarity before a single touch sends her flings her over the edge and into him and with that release, she forgets everything. For a split second there’s nothing but his hands and his heat and the way she feels about him, no betrayals or daughters or fraught history to keep them apart.

As swiftly as the mindlessness graces her it leaves. She’s bereft in its wake and while Marcus kisses half-vocalized love words into her hair she’s conscious of the sweat between them cooling, the way her pants are digging into the back of her knees and starting to cut off her circulation.

She shifts, restless. “Marcus, my legs…”

He rolls off her immediately, reaching out with a contrite face to help her sit up. “I’m sorry. I should have helped you take them off entirely, but when you said you wanted me—”

“It’s all right.” She cuts him off and stands, ignoring the way her thighs feels sticky and uncomfortable and pulling her pants back up. “If I had minded, I would have let you know.”

“Where are you going?” His eyes dart to the door, and he quickly buttons his own pants again and eyes the distance between them, ready to try and stop her from making a quit exit. “Abby, please don’t run away.”

“I’m not running away.” She snaps out the defense with too much heat to be an effective denial. “What? I’m not. I told Jackson I would be back at the end of the hour.”

Sighing, Marcus takes hold of her hand. “At least let me apologize.”

“Marcus…”

“No, let me say this.” When she gives him a pained nod, he takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I wish we could send out a team now, you have to believe that. Tell me you believe that.”

His sincerity makes her hurt all the deeper, but Abby manages a nod and a strained smile. “I believe it.” He looks ready to protest and she kisses it away, heart a searing ache in her chest. “I believe you, Marcus, but I really do need to get back.”

“Thank you,” he breathes out, lashes fluttering down to cover his eyes. “I’ll save her, Abby. I will. Now, go. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He kisses her forehead, then her lips, and she feels the weight of her choices drawing them both inexorably towards morning, and the breaking points she’s set in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE'RE BACK, BITCHES! After a long hiatus for a variety of reasons, we now return you to your semi-regularly scheduled updates. Thanks to everyone who stuck around through the gap. ❤️
> 
> PS: Blame Kelly for that last scene. She told me there had to be earth sex before Marcus left, and who am I to tell her no?


	3. we found ourselves so late that we could not stop but to change our horses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Kane has his moment in the belly of the whale, Abby levels up, Jackson finally snaps, and there are Vera feels _everywhere_.

The night is a far from a restful one. Marcus slept once Abby left; troubled sleep, with a vague suspicion chipping away at the feeling of contentment being with Abby always gives him. They’ve been in each other’s lives since they were children, and while he may not always be able to lay claim to understanding why she does much of anything he does know her. She wasn’t herself when she’d arrived at his door; or too much herself, perhaps. As much as Marcus would like to chalk it up to tumult in the aftermath of coming to terms with what needs to be done, making her peace without first putting up a prolonged fight doesn’t feel like the woman he knows.

His radio chirps and he knows before he knows what exactly it is he knows, the bitter taste of foreknowledge rising in the back of his throat. “This is Kane.”

“Sir, it’s the prisoners. They’re gone.” Byrne sounds downright distressed, and understandably so. Barely two days on earth and they’re beginning to lose control of a population hanging on by a rapidly fraying thread. Someone would have to be either certifiable or very, very stupid to have let those boys go.

The pieces come together with startling ease. The only real unknown is _when_ Abby had done it.

“Sir?” Byrne sounds like she’s repeating herself.

“I’ll be right there, major.”

There’s no time to do more than get dressed again and Marcus takes what precious little he’s allowed to attempt building up the sort of callouses he’ll need to see them all through this now that Abby’s stripped him bare.

“Medical, this is Chancellor Kane.”

“This is medical. What can we do for you, chancellor?” It takes a full minute for a reply to come, and it’s Jackson’s suspicious voice he hears in answer rather than Abby’s. He can’t decide if he’s relieved or furious, and finally splits the difference between them.

“Tell Dr. Griffin she’s needed in the brig. Immediately.”

Silence reigns for a moment, Jackson’s end of the connection absent of even breath. “What happened?”

“It doesn’t concern you. You’ll tell her?”

“She’s with a patient. I can tell her once she’s done...”

“I believe I already said immediately, Jackson, but I can make it a direct order from your chancellor if that’s what it takes.”

“No, sir.” His sullen tone is background noise now. All Marcus needs is his obedience, not his regard.

“Good.”

Byrne is pacing when he arrives, brow knit together. “Sir. We checked the armory, and someone gave them guns, too. They were still here and cuffed when we did a check before lights out, so they can’t have been gone for more than six hours. I thought four a day would be sufficient, but...”

Marcus struggles to keep the pain of doing that particular math off his face. Abby knocked on his door an hour or so after then, so she’d either come to him directly from committing a felony or left his bed to go do the same.

God, he’s such a fool. Clearing his throat, he waves away Byrne’s implied apology. “It should have been, given the circumstances. I made the same assumption.”

She nods, looking unconvinced. “Even knowing the terrain it still takes time to get anywhere in these woods. It’s safe to say they just headed back to their camp, but I’d like to send Davis along with the search team just in case. Pike was training him as an eventual replacement, I think he’d like a chance to get some practical in.”

The loss of a reliable friend and skilled ally like Charles is another pinprick of agony. Charles would have been able to reason with Abby about this, he’s sure of it. He’d always been magnetic enough to pull people into his reach and keep them there in a way Marcus apparently can’t accomplish on his own. Caught up in his mounting sense of helplessness, he issues his refusal before she’s finished her sentence and with more bite than it deserves. “We’re not sending out a team.”

“Sir?”

“We can’t afford to waste the time and put more of our people in harm’s way. No team, major.” She nods, and he resigns himself to the inevitable. “We need to concentrate on finding anyone who helped them.”

 _Anyone_. As if there’s a question who let them free and why.

“Jackson said you needed me?”

Abby’s entrance is worthy of the stage. Marcus’ heart pitches in his chest, headache gathering as he watches Byrne put the very simple clues before her together. “I do. Thank you, major.” She nods a solemn goodbye, darting a suspicious glance at Abby before turning neatly on her heel and exiting, hands clasped behind her and posture ramrod straight. He admires it for a moment, her unconscious echo of the elegant lines of order he’s spent his adult life attempting to preserve; then he turns back to Abby and her complete refusal of the same. “Bellamy Blake and John Murphy went missing last night.”

“I can see that.” Her chin tilts up, daring him to say it.

She’s beautiful even when she’s turning that iron will he can’t help but admire against him, and it makes him even angrier. His choices would be simpler if she had remained his best friend’s widow and not moved to some indeterminate state between spark and flame.

He huffs out a short, humorless laugh. “I won’t bother to ask if it was you.”

Her lips part in shock. “Marcus…” It’s a protest, not a denial of his suspicions.

“God _damnit_ , Abigail, what were you thinking?”

“I—”

Incensed, he presses on. “No, you don’t think. You just do what you want and to hell with the consequences. It’s like you think they don’t exist.”

“I know they exist.” She brings a hand up to her neck, clutching the chain that leads under her shirt. “I’m willing to face them because I know I’m _right_.”

Even that subtle reminder of what rebellion has already cost her isn’t enough to cool his ire. “You armed children. Angry, traumatized children, and you sent them out into a diplomatic nightmare enough firepower to do real damage. You’re not right, you’re thoughtless. You don’t want to look at the bigger picture or the unintended consequences of your actions, because it means you have to give up some of that self-righteousness and admit you’ve never been forced to bear the weight of making choices for _everyone_ , not just the people you love.”

“That’s not fair.”

The hint of shame he hears in her voice gives him a sick thrill of satisfaction. She’s set him so far off course he can’t find the clear path back; it’s only fair he have even a fraction of the same effect. “Isn’t it? We need every person and every weapon we have right now, and to not exacerbate things with the grounders. What about the rest of our people? What if more of them die because you're too obsessed with Clarke to see what's in front of you?”

“She’s my daughter!” She closes in on him, radiating fury. “Call me selfish if you want, I’ll do anything I can to save her.”

“You don't understand the consequences of your actions.” He tugs at his hair in frustration, pulling the sweaty curls away from his forehead. “I thought we’d moved beyond this. I thought we trusted each other enough to at least keep our arguments from devolving into plotting.”

 _That_ at least seems to pain her, but her face stays defiant. “I did what I had to do.”

“What you had to—Abby, this wasn’t some benign quest to find your child, this was a string of felonies. And in service of what, a mission led a trigger happy young man and the boy he tried to _kill_ yesterday afternoon?”

“Bellamy won’t hurt Murphy. He promised me.”

Marcus feels his jaw drop. “He _promised_... you must be joking.” Her eyes flash in warning, but sheer indignant fury pushes him onward without bothering to temper his words. “Even you can’t be that naive. As chancellor you can’t expect me to simply _allow_ —”

“And how did you become chancellor, Marcus?” With surgical precision, she cuts to the heart of the fear driving him and pulls it out, exposing his inadequacies to the light as only she can. “Were you elected? Did the people _choose_ you?”

He sags, fury swallowed down by shame and the ugly truth of the matter. “No.”

“You have the pin because Thelonious found the out he’d been looking for before you found yours.” Her eyes are two burning coals, searing into his own. “I accept whatever consequences you find necessary, _chancellor_ , but I refuse to apologize for doing what needed to be done.”

She doesn’t wait for him to regain breath and dismiss her. Instead, bearing as regal as any queen, she sweeps out without another glance. He’s colder for the lack, standing by himself in the half-light to feel her barbs work themselves down to the bone.

 

* * *

 

Byrne is waiting outside the door when Abby exits, loitering too obviously to be doing anything but waiting for her. She gives her a look that promises trouble ahead, lips pursed until they disappear entirely. It’s going to have to be a worry for another day, because Abby’s too furious to do much more than narrow her own eyes in a return volley before she’s turned her back and rounded the corner, trying to eat up enough ground to get away from her confrontation with Marcus. He’d given her a look of such bleak, terrible disappointment when she’d confirmed his suspicions and he might have answered her unheard prayers when he left their last night together unmentioned, but the uncomfortable ring of truth she’d heard in his accusations strikes harder than her guilt over that lesser betrayal.

_What about the rest of our people? What if more of them die because you're too obsessed with Clarke to see what's in front of you?_

She does her best to banish the words and concentrate on everything else he’d said. He hadn’t asked who helped her, or mentioned the three others she’d sent along with Bellamy and Murphy. It means Monroe and Finn and Sterling will stand a better chance of escaping punishments of their own once they return.

“Dr Griffin!” As if summoned by her thoughts David Miller catches up with her halfway to medical, melting out of the crowd to attach himself to her elbow.

“What did Kane want?” He keeps his face blank as any guard approaching their chief medical officer, but his eyes betray his fear.

Abby pats his forearm, the chance to relieve someone’s mind a small weight she can take off her own. “I didn’t tell him, David.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.” She shrugs and waves the whole idea away, still smiling, while his face stays unexpectedly serious. “Maybe you should.”

“...I’m sorry?”

“Maybe you should.” They’re still a few yards away from the entrance to somewhere they might be able to talk about this safely, but David stops walking and stubbornly plants his heels in the mud, looking like he’d just said something _sensible_ and not an offer to turn himself over as well. “If he knows you weren’t the only one involved, it might help mitigate the sentence...”

“Absolutely not. Here, come with me. We shouldn’t discuss this out in the middle of everything.” Taking hold of his sleeve she starts to walk, forcing him to visibly pull away and draw attention to them or keep pace with her. With a little grunt of annoyance he cooperates, and Abby waits until they’re sheltered in the relative privacy of her makeshift operating room to finish the conversation. “Be honest. If I hadn’t showed up to steal those guns, would you have taken them yourself?”

“Abby, come on.”

“Well, would you?” He looks like he desperately wants to say yes but can’t find a way to sell it, even to himself. Finally, he shakes his head in a quick negative and she spreads her hands out, an impresario presenting the final act. “Well, then. I would have taken them with or without you, so I’m the one who’s actually responsible.”

His mouth twitches into a reluctant smile. “That’s certainly a creative application of the charter.”

“I mean it, David. Marcus is angry with me, yes, but he’s not wondering if I had help. I’d like to keep it that way.”

He scans her face for any sign she doesn’t mean it, even the smallest hint of fear. When he can’t find it, he surrenders to the inevitable. “Looks like I’m in your debt twice over, now.”

“Who’s counting? You helped me too, don't forget.”

He squeezes her shoulder, thumb digging into the tense lump of muscle in a silent thank you, and his eyes are warm despite the ever-present worry. “Keep looking for our kids, Abby. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“...I can come back later if I’m interrupting something.”

“It’s fine, Jackson.” Abby sighs, wrinkling her nose at David when he chuckles quietly. “Go, before anyone wonders why you spent so long in here.”

“I’ll head out the back so it seems like I came to check up on one of my team.” Nodding a goodbye that encompasses Abby and Jackson, David disappears through the tent flaps that lead to the rows of cots housing the more few people still in need of constant care.

Abby watches him go then wheels back to Jackson, already shaking her head. “Don’t start.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

“I wasn’t going to start anything.” Sighing, Abby waits for the inevitable. “I was just going to say I’m glad you started taking my advice.”

“ _Jackson_.” Grinning, he lets it go. “Sinclair’s here. He’s fine, he’s sitting with Raven and waiting for you.” He hesitates, then adds, “Did Kane—”

“He didn’t immediately arrest me. I’m sure he’ll come up with something later so he can satisfy himself I didn’t just get away with flouting his authority.” She squeezes his bicep. “He’s angry, yes, but I’ll live through it. Don’t worry.”

“If you say so.” She tips her head: _I do_. He sighs, then waves vaguely towards where they’d cordoned a smaller room off for Raven to sleep without feeling watched. “Go, talk to Sinclair.”

The man in question is hovering over Raven’s bed when she arrives, staring down at her with a look that only grants the longing for Clarke tearing away at her sharper claws.

“You care about her a lot.”

Sinclair’s head whips up, posture going defensive before easing when he realizes it’s her, mouth relaxing into the quirked half-smile. “She’s worth a lot of caring.”

Abby returns that smile. “She really is. Here, come over here, I’ll update you and we can let her sleep.” The room’s hardly large enough for _privacy_ , but standing by the wall is better than right over her.

Nodding, Sinclair strokes Raven’s hair away from her face with a distracted paternal affection that reminds her so much of Jake it makes tears stab at her eyes. She raises her sleeve to dash them away before he notices, masking the intent by wiping away a smear of dirt with the same motion once he joins her, stretching until the tension in his spine release with a soft pop.

“So, I hear you’re in trouble again.”

Abby gapes at him. “...do you know everything?”

“Well, word gets around fast when there’s something juicy like a jailbreak or a weapons heist, and I know you…” His lips twitch. “And then Kane called you to the brig, that certainly helped confirm the gossip.” He gives her a concerned look. “You sure you know what you’re doing, Abby?”

“No, but I know I can’t do nothing.”

“Fair enough.” He breaths deep, eyes fluttering shut, then looks over at Raven. “She’s been sleeping a lot.”

“She’ll need to do that while she recovers.”

“How much of that is she in for?”

Abby watches Raven twitch in discomfort in her sleep and then presses her lips together in an unhappy line. “The damage was extensive. The long term prognosis is going to depend on physical therapy and being very careful and sheer luck, but if we both do our job I think she can expect to see improvements with time.”

“So what’s the version where you don’t soft-pedal it?”

“You sound so much like her.”

“ _Abby_.”

She sighs and relents. “She’s never going to have the same level of mobility or sensation as before she was shot. She’ll walk again if everything goes well, but it’s always going to be painful and if she’s not careful, she could lose the ability entirely no matter what I do for her.”

He nods tightly, then exhales in an angry, defeated rush. “She’s too young for this, Abby.”

“She’s strong enough to handle it.”

“She shouldn’t have to be.”

Heart aching, Abby turns to watch Raven twitch and grunt softly, no longer able to simply ignore her body even in sleep. “No. She shouldn’t have to be.”

 

* * *

 

“You radioed, sir?”

“I did.” Abby is on her knees at the edge of camp, tending to a cut one of the women working to build the fence garnered over the course of the day. Late afternoon sunlight glints off her hair, picking out gold in the tawny mass and setting it ablaze. A day ago he would have been able to enjoy knowing it wasn’t all poetic nonsense, the light really _does_ change with the hour, and Abby’s hair changes along with it. Now, the pit of dread yawning wide in his stomach steals all the pleasure from the moment and leaves it dull and colorless as the Ark. “Dr. Griffin confessed to arming those boys and setting them free. She’s to be confined to quarters when she’s not working with a guard posted outside her door, and another two-man detail when she’s at work. Even in the operating room, no matter what she says.”

Byrne nods, a tight little downward slash that reveals how little she approves of his judgement.

Marcus feels his own aggravation rise. “Just say it, major.”

“Dr. Griffin isn’t cleared to carry. Procurement or use of firearms by unauthorized persons is a felony, you said it yourself.” Her mouth pinches tighter. “And she gave those weapons to convicted criminals, sir. That’s aiding and abetting.”

“Bellamy Blake was never convicted.”

She pauses. “I’m sorry?”

“John Murphy may have been a convicted criminal, but Bellamy was pardoned by Chancellor Jaha before a trial could take place. And he was in that cell as a precaution, until he’d sufficiently cooled down and been made to see reason.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Her throat bobs on a dry, audible swallow. “Regardless, the Exodus Charter is clear on this matter. Punishment for a felony is shocklashing, not a personal guard detail and curtailed movement.” She falters, seeming to try and gather courage. “Sir, I know she’s your friend…”

There’s a telling space of silence before Byrne chooses the word friend and Marcus can tell at once the gossip has already reached her, and she’s struggling to ask if he’s willing to see around the law simply to keep a woman in his bed—or worse, to lure her _back_ there.

Even the assumption stings, and serves to feed the pit of doubt growing in his stomach that she’s seeing their situation with clear eyes while his own have been clouded by his feelings for Abby and how the selfish, irrational creature she’s released inside him would rather just let her get away with flagrantly violating the charter.

“She’s not just my friend. She’s the only other surviving member of the council and the most respected person in this camp.”

“I know that, sir, and that’s why she’s a significant threat to your control over this camp.” Byrne is unabashed in the face of his glare at the description of Abby as a threat. “And why she can be the perfect deterrent to further problems.”

“On the Ark we had no choice but to subsist on last resorts. Mercy was a luxury. But here…” he looks around can’t help but wonder what mom would say if she could see the dilemma Abby laid at her doorstep. Earth had been her dream, the world she’d devoted her life to serving despite never believing she’d see it herself. He was supposed to give her world to be proud of. “Here we have a chance to start over. To be better than we were.”

“I hope you’re right, sir.” She looks around the open field slowly becoming their main square of sorts and with her eyes, he sees the anger and fear brewing, swirling around the edges of the children playing and constant hum and clatter of building. “Because this camp is balanced on the edge of a knife, and one good shove could shove us down onto it.” He starts to reply when she jumps like she’s been prodded with a shock baton and touches her ear at the same moment shouting starts at the edges of camp. “Sir, it’s a grounder! One of our teams subdued him and brought him back for interrogation. They’re coming through the treeline now.”

The crowd’s curiosity turns quickly to fear when the team comes close enough to display their extra member is a prisoner, not one of their own. Marcus flicks his gaze between their faces, fear building as he watches a man push the the front of the gathering mass and make his way towards the grounder with gathering speed. “ _Where’s my son_!” Olivera steps into his way, shoving the grounder back and trying to stave off a confrontation between them. The man only howls his anguish louder and Marcus hears the words as if they’re coming from miles away, the brief haze almost immediately broken by a gunshot and the sound of a body thudding to the dirt.

Abby’s shoulder hits his side as she and Jackson run past him to collect their new patient and bear him away to medical, and Marcus staggers back a step, helpless for a moment to do anything but witness the aftermath.

“He just reached for my gun!” Olivera’s eyes are wide and panicked, breath coming in shaky bursts. “Chancellor, I’m so sorry, he was screaming about his son and I tried to stop him from touching the prisoner and it went off…”

“It’s all right. It’s all right, I said. Go. We all saw it, this was an accident.” Olivera flees inside and Marcus wheels on the rest of his team, shouting loud enough to silence the crowd. “Get the prisoner inside! Do not _touch_ that man, do you hear me? Get him inside!”

“The edge of the knife, sir,” Byrne mutters as she passes him to help secure the grounder, and for a moment the sky itself seems to hold its breath in trepidation.

The solution is as obvious and painful as the problem. Marcus takes a deep breath, staring at where trees meet sky until the blue and green smear together and his eyes water before turning away from what can be and back to what _is_.

“Major, have a few members of the guard put together a public punishment station. Use the wreckage if you have to, maybe some of the safety netting.”

“...Sir?” Byrne cocks her head, brows knit in confusion.

“Once you’ve done that, collect Dr. Griffin from medical. If Jackson tries to tell you she’s with a patient, interrupt her anyway.” It’s not outside the realm of possibility if they give Jackson time to warn Abby she’ll leave and try to find Clarke on her own, regardless of the risks. “It’s time to make sure our people know actions still have consequences.”

Her face is drawn into even more sparing lines in thought. “There are a few trees the grounders must have stripped…”

Marcus looks the way she indicates and nods, trying not to superimpose the image of Abby bound between them. He’ll see it soon enough. “See to it, major.”

“Yes sir, Chancellor Kane.”

They hardly have enough water to justify wasting it on shaving, but he needs to remind himself what leadership means, and the sacrifices it requires. It’s easier to feel like himself without blurring the lines between chancellor and man.

The corridors are deserted, and he makes it to his room without needing to face another soul. It’s a blessing; Abby might say a sign, if she weren’t deadset against lending her inexhaustible and illogical optimism to _his_ cause. He snorts bitterly, sound covered by the rattle-slam of the door as he shuts it behind him.

Examining his face in the mirror is a shock. There had barely been time to sleep, let alone examine his appearance, and Abby seemed too pleased with it to pay it any further attention. His beard’s come in fast, and silver at the edges, matching the same slowly clustering at his temples.

He looks… soft. Like the sort of man who might let the last vestiges of civilized humanity die under his watch.

In the mirror, that man’s eyes harden, and he lifts his razor to clear a line of skin from cheekbone to jaw, then another, and another. Each pass of the razor builds his confidence, and he repeats his reasons as a litany, slowly clearing away any traces of hair.

Abby willfully broke the law. She lied to him. She ignored his warnings and forced his hand.

Setting down the razor, he looks at himself in the mirror, absentmindedly flicking away small beads of blood from a cut on his jaw. The man in the mirror is a chancellor, straight backed and certain, not a desperate man failing to hold together a camp already attempting to spin into chaos.

Thelonious had given him the answer weeks ago and he refused to hear it, but now he lets it seep in: a leader needs to be able to govern without sentiment, and he needs to be that leader. Abby is all maddening sentiment, so maybe this will teach them both a much needed lesson.

 

* * *

 

Abby’s hands are covered in blood halfway up her forearms by the time they wrestle him onto the table and cut his pantleg open to examine the wound, and it doesn’t take long for the flow to become a trickle, and the trickle to come to a stop.

She sits back on her heels in defeat, resisting the urge to lift a hand and wipe at the sweat beading all along her face. Jackson helps her up and directs her towards their small basin of water, tugging a threadbare sheet up over the corpse.

“The bullet hit his femoral?”

Abby nods, scrubbing at her hands and cursing under her breath. “I’d have to take a closer look to confirm for sure, but I’d say it severed it entirely.”

Jackson sighs, crowding her companionably to the side to wash his own hands and offer silent comfort. They lean on each other, water lapping at the sides of the bowl the only sound in the room beyond their breathing.

“So, any word from Kane?”

Of course it was too good to last. Abby shakes her head, finishing up with the worst of the stains on her arms. “You’ll be the first one to hear when he does decide, I promise.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” Startled, she looks up and finds his eyes wet.

“Don’t act like I’m worried about nothing. He was going to _kill_ you, Abby. He might do it again.”

“Jackson, he’s not going to kill me—”

“You don’t know that.”

Her heart aches at his stubborn, angry tone. His distrust of Marcus had seemed to be waning into rote distaste, but something must have happened between them when he radioed, looking for her.

“You’re right, I don’t. But I know Marcus, and I think he’ll do his best to make an example of me with boredom. Isolation outside of work, maybe guards to show me I can’t get away with anything again. I’ll be fine. If you can’t trust him, can you trust _me_?”

He nods, but any reply is rendered moot by Byrne’s entrance.

“Dr. Griffin? Ma’am, you need to come with us. Chancellor’s orders.” She’s as professional as ever, but Abby can sense the satisfaction hiding under her crisp manners.

Jackson takes quick stock of the situation and puts his body between Abby and the rest of the room, ready to force the issue if someone tries to make him move. She’s never expected to feel the building tension of someone getting ready to throw a punch from Jackson of all people, but there’s no mistaking that feeling of potential violence brewing just below the surface.

She neatly sidesteps him and quickens her pace to place herself out of his reach and within the grasp of Byrne’s men, doing her best to keep her voice steady and not to flinch away from the betrayal and fear in his eyes. Marcus’ words about unintended consequences come to mind again, and she can’t bear the idea that the overpowering need to find one of her children could possibly harm the other. “Jackson, I want you to stay here and keep an eye on medical.”

“Abby, no, I’m not going to leave you.”

“Stay _here_ , Jackson.”

He follows close at their heels and Abby gives up on trying to make him stay, concentrating instead on keeping her head high and walking as if there aren’t guards encircling her as she walks, a more effective cage than if they’d simply dragged her there. Abby’s grateful for his presence when it becomes clear Byrne intends to march her through the middle of camp to reach their goal, and their bizarre little parade is gaining spectators.

Marcus would have the decency to come collect her himself if this was the long walk to her execution, but here’s a public punishment short of death the Exodus charter recommends for what she had done. She had discounted the possibility out of hand; it was brutal, but more than that this was _Marcus_. The idea that he might allow it, and what that means for them both, feels like taking a sharp blow to the side of the head.

Abby’s breath comes in shorter pulls as she thinks about it, what now obviously awaits her at the top of the ridge. Diana’s man had used a shock baton to knock her unconscious, but there’s a difference between a quick burst of pain and an almost immediate drop into unconsciousness and what put the unholy zeal in Byrne’s eyes.

The first time she tended to the aftereffects of a shocklashing, she was fourteen. She even did some work in a joint effort with Sinclair on refining the current. They hadn’t tested it on themselves, of course, but she’d observed the effects on their volunteers.

She swallows through a dry throat, staring down and watching her feet stop moving rather than commanding them to do it, the toes of her boots nearly touching Marcus’ own.

When she drags her gaze up, his face is clean shaven and his eyes inscrutable. “Marcus, what’s going on?”

 

* * *

 

Marcus watches Abby’s forced march from the top of the hill and curses Byrne. It’s effective enough for gathering a crowd, but the goal isn’t to _humiliate_ her, just enforce the rule of law. It’s too late to do anything for it, and her question only tears at the open wound of guilt. He’s seen Abby when she’s still putting the pieces together too many times to mistake this for confusion. It’s fear driving her to ask him to confirm what she already knows, and Marcus feels his hands ache down to the bone with the urge to soothe her.

“I’m sorry, Abby. I wish there was another way. ” Her eyes bounce from him to Byrne to the incongruously cheery yellow webbing prepared to hold her fast so they can lash her. “But you’ve left me no choice.”

Byrne’s voice cuts through the slowly building hum of the crowd. “Dr. Abigail Griffin has confessed to aiding and abetting convicted criminals and supplying them with firearms. The punishment set forth for her crimes in the Exodus charter is shocklashing.” Abby stares at her as if transfixed, jumping a little when she continues, “In light of the seriousness of the offenses, she’ll be given ten lashes. On your command, Chancellor Kane.”

Abby turns back to him, eyes wide and panicked as she tries to shy away from the hands reaching for her and take hold of his arm. “Marcus, please. Please, we don’t have to do this down here. We don’t have to be like this.”

Stepping away from her grasp, he nods to the guards holding each of her elbows. “Secure her.” Abby doesn’t fight their hands or move when Byrne rips open the back of her shirt, but her eyes remain fixed on his until he wishes she had, willing to take anything to escape the betrayal reflected there. “Proceed, Major Byrne.”

Abby bites back her cry at the last moment when Byrne touches her shock baton to the bared skin of her lower back, only a short yelp of pain able to escape before the rest is swallowed back down in defiance.

He gives her a moment to catch her breath, then nods to bring down the lash once more. “Again.”

This time she sags in her bonds and she only manages to bite off her cry of pain halfway through, a grunt of effort escaping through clenched teeth as she struggles back up and meets his eyes again, anger blistering as raw metal.

“Again.”

This time she does scream, long and angry. Marcus feels the sound tear at him, watching Abby sag until her weight is largely supported by the straps he’d ordered the people he was meant to lead to tie around her wrists and wondering how skin he’d kissed became enemy territory; how he’d _allowed_ this, encouraged her to become foreign to him again. Her fingers twitch and hands curl and she hauls herself up to stand on legs that tremble obviously, back already bowing inward anticipation of Byrne’s next blow. The crowd is with her, that much is obvious by now, and Marcus feels the unique clarity of finding himself standing in the eye of a hurricane of his own making.

“Again.”

Her howl seems to crack the sky, sending broken pieces down to skewer him like St. Sebastian’s arrows. “Again.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice, the air of command this was supposed to lend him eaten away to expose the man underneath, who doesn’t understand how this started and wants nothing more than for it to end. “Again.”

She doesn’t rise to her feet after the sixth touch of the lash and Marcus feels as though he’s drowning. The remaining strokes still need meting out, but he can’t make his mouth form the order.

Then she moans in pain, slumping ever closer to the ground and Byrne looks to him to finish it before Abby passes out and requires them to repeat the whole torturous process all over again to finish out her sentence. “Again, major.” The scream that results is enough to prove that the expected loss of muscle control doesn’t mean she’s close to losing consciousness, and regret clogs his throat. “Again.” Another scream, and another, and finally on the tenth and final stroke she _howls_ , all pretense at holding herself up abandoned now that the end has come and she can stop steeling herself in preparation for the next blow.

Thelonious would have the strength to stay and face what he’d done, but Marcus manages a vague order to see Abby back to medical to Byrne before stumbling off, dizziness setting in as what just happened—no, what he’d done. And he had done it, even if he’d let Byrne bring down the lash. The burns he knows must be spread across Abby’s back hadn’t simply happened, he’d willed them into being.

Bile building in the back of his throat, Marcus breathes through his nose and does his best to remember why this had been necessary. He had been so _sure_ of it.

“Kane!”

He keeps stumbling onward, hoping to find a space place to rest and make sense of it all, the demand for his attention and disregard for his position just so much noise.

“Kane!” Jackson grabs him by the shoulder, grip strong enough to spin him around. “I need to talk to you.”

Marcus stares at him with dead eyes and wonders if he’ll risk taking a swing at his chancellor; part of him craves it, some concrete symbol he’s paid at least the slightest price for today instead of the sort of wounds he can’t expose to the world without first explaining them.

Instead, Jackson yanks his hand away and rubs it off on his jacket like he can’t bear even that smallest point of contact. “I can’t believe I trusted you with her. I told her you were a bad idea,” he scoffs, disgusted. “First she it was just sex, then she said you changed, and I didn’t argue but I always knew. From from the minute you first had her dragged to the airlock—”

“Jackson—”

“—for trying to save the chancellor’s _life_ ,” Jackson finishes, right over the middle of his attempt at protest.

“She broke the law—”

“No, shut up. I’m talking right now.” Worn out, he simply nods, and Jackson makes him wait for what feels like years before he accepts Marcus really has lost the will to keep interjecting. “What would Vera say about what you did to her?”

Marcus feels the ground yawn open at his feet. “I don’t… how did you know my mother?”

Jackson narrows his eyes like he’s considering refusing to answer out of spite, but once he starts to speak Marcus wishes he hadn’t. “After my mom died, I would spend time with her when Abby was busy.”

Mom’s orphans had been a background detail for so long he can’t conjure up Jackson’s face among the throng, even with a decade shaved off, but it made sense she would have swept him up. Abby had a family of her own, and life for the children unfortunate enough to lose both parents before they’d already transitioned into their own quarters wasn’t easy. She would have liked him, too, and the thought sends a shock of horror through his system. What _would_ she think of what he’d done?

“If you want me to say I regret it, you’ve already won,” he croaks.

Jackson crosses his arms over his chest. “I want you to answer my question.”

“She would be horrified.” Hearing it makes the pain multiply tenfold, and he feels tears prick at his lids.

“I want you to leave Abby alone.” The enjoyment seems to have drained from Jackson, whatever vindictive impulse had made him mention Vera slipping away. “It’s her choice who she sees and I won’t bother trying to tell her what to do, but if you care about her at all…” he shakes his head. “Look what you’ve already done to her, and make the right choice.”

He’s right, but the thought of stepping away from Abby by choice is as appealing as doing the same with one of his limbs.

“All right.”

“...All right?” Jackson’s brows snap together suspiciously.

“All right.” Inhaling deeply, Marcus shakes his head. “And I was worried you were going to hit me.”

“Well, I _wanted_ to hit you.”

Marcus snorts, weighing the destruction of the floodgates holding back thoughts of Vera and a promise to give up on something he wanted before he had words to explain what it was he wanted. “For future reference, I would have preferred it if you had.”

 

* * *

 

The acute pain fades before Byrne decides Abby’s ready to be released under her own speed, but the lingering ache and the trembling in every muscle keep her in place more than the pain had.

When the time comes David supports all her weight without indicating he knows she still needs it, and at his nod a tall woman in a guard uniform silently takes her left elbow and does the same. Their progress is painstaking and humiliatingly slow, but she won’t be carried. The path flows like water and clears in front of them. Abby is only barely aware of the hesitant, respectful murmurs following their passage. The simple absence of anything to trip over makes her almost tearfully grateful and each hastily yanked away obstacle seems to help her stand a little straighter.

When they reach medical David leaves her at the main entrance, clasping her shoulder in a gentle thank you the woman echoes with a solemn nod.

The trembling is better now if not entirely gone, and Abby makes her way through their ever-shrinking corridors without incident, cutting out through a side flap and then back in closer to surgery so she can avoid the cots they’ve set up for patients waiting to be treated, and any questions that might be waiting for her there.

The route to surgery is easy from there, and when she finishes blinking away the already routine momentary half-blindness that comes from moving inside after spending time in full daylight, the murky blur on the table resolves itself into Raven, still pale and sweaty with the effort it took her to walk there, but looking better than Abby could have hoped at this point.

“Hey, you.”

“Hey, Abby.” Raising her hand in a sloppy wave, she gestures towards the door. “Heard you screaming. If that’s anything like how I sounded when you took the bullet out, no wonder everybody gets all sad-eyed when they talk to me now.” She speeds past any chance to reassure her, and Abby’s still too dazed to chase the matter. “Was it because you helped Finn?”

“...Raven.”

“So that’s a yes.” Her dark eyes are soft, but she seems to understand Abby doesn’t want to hear an apology for any minor part she played in a choice willingly made. “Can I take a look?”

Finding a shirt to replace the one she’s wearing is tomorrow’s aggravation; for now, keeping her back open to the air feels better than covering it ever could, and it means she can simply turn to show Raven the damage without needing to adjust anything and pull at her burns. Raven leans in and examines them with an engineer’s eye, refreshingly matter of fact when she clucks her tongue and leans back, shaking her head. “Ouch.”

Laughter comes shockingly easy, and it lifts some of the weight pressing down on her chest. She laughs until the tears gather at the corner of her eyes and start to spill over, washing away the trapped animal fear of being tied down and made to accept pain. “That’s a good word for it.”

Jackson’s entrance breaks the moment, his eyes frantic until he realizes she’s laughing, not truly crying. “...are you all right?”

“She’s good. Just overwhelmed by my natural charm, right Abby?” Raven winks at her and Abby laughs again, nodding.

“I’m fine, Jackson. I could use a hand with cleaning my back, though.”

From the exam table, Raven waves them off like a queen dismissing her subjects. “Go, I’m good here. Was kind of feeling like stretching out, anyway.”

Abby frowns. “Your leg needs rest, Raven.”

“I said I was going to stretch out, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but are you actually _going_ to?”

“Space Scout’s honor.” Raven wrinkles her nose, reconsidering. “Grounder Scout?”

“That was terrible, but I’ll take it. _Rest_ , all right? Recovery takes time.”

Jackson takes her arm as they walk, and Abby doesn’t fight him over it. She can’t imagine what she’d do if he had been the one to be shocklashed, and her words to Raven are too recent not to be turned and used against her. His help ends up being a boon when she wavers a little trying to push herself up and onto the table, and she steadies herself with a grateful nod.

“Where did you go after? Byrne didn’t try anything, did she?”

He shakes his head, turning away to grab everything he needs to clean her back. “No, they wouldn’t let anybody see you until you could stand again, then I couldn’t find you after they had.” Which doesn’t explain why he’d been gone when Byrne released her, but the harsh burn of antiseptic steals the desire to question him about it further. He swabs even more delicately at her wince, but the sting is inescapable. After a long moment, Jackson mutters, “I hate him.”

There’s no need to ask who he means. Abby sighs, shaking her head helplessly. “He did what he thought was right.”

“Why are you defending him?”

“Jackson, I _did_ break the law. Several laws, in fact, and he thinks if he makes an example of me now, he won’t need to do it to anyone else.”

He almost vibrates with righteous fervor. “You sound like you think it was the right thing to do. Like you aren’t angry with him.”

Abby feels her lips pull into a reluctant, bitter smile. “Oh, I’m furious, but…”

“But _what_?” Pleading, he takes hold of her hand. “Abby, he _hurt_ you.”

“He did, yes.” Jackson makes an inarticulate noise of frustration, and she draws him into a hug. “I understand, sweetheart.”

“Then why?”

“I understand Marcus, too.”

 

* * *

 

What Jackson made him admit is still weighing heavily on his mind when Marcus joins Byrne to begin interrogating the grounder. He sheds his jacket, telling himself it’s because the cell has risen to a temperature that’s only vaguely tolerable; true, but the absence of the pin he knows now he never deserved is the true relief.

“Who sent you?” They’d agreed Byrne would question him herself and allow Marcus to observe, giving him a better chance of catching any inadvertent tells. The hard edge to her voice says that might have been a mistake. “Was it the same person who took the kids? Your commander?”

The grounder stares up at them, seeming to recognize that she had spoken without understanding the words themselves. Her tone appears to have translated perfectly, however, because he gives her an assessing look that makes Marcus realize he’ll have to put someone like David Miller in charge of keeping their prisoner alive if he wants to see them all come out of this better for it.

“Who sent you? Answer the question.” The grounder continues to stare, but somehow he smiles mockingly without ever twitching a muscle. “I said answer the question, grounder. Answer it!”

Her sidearm is in her hand before Marcus realizes she’s decided to pull it, pointed unerringly at the middle of their prisoner’s forehead.

“Holster your sidearm, major.” She doesn’t waver, and Marcus raises his voice, taking a step towards her and throwing any concern about telegraphing weaknesses in their command structure to the wind.

She only steps closer to the grounder, grazing his skin with the barrel of her gun and snarling like an animal. “Those men you killed? Those were _my_ men.”

“Step back from the prisoner and put it _away_ , Byrne.”

Hate and terror turns her voice into a strangled roar. “They were good men, and you butchered them.”

“Holster your weapon and _stand down_ , or so help me god I’ll put you in the cell next to him.”

Byrne looks for a moment like she’s weighing the benefit of pulling the trigger and accepting whatever he decides to do with her after and Marcus holds his breath, praying on the outcome in a way he hasn’t since he was a child. Then, slowly, she lowers the gun.

“You need air, major. Go get some.” She opens her mouth, and he cuts over her. “ _Now_. That’s an order.”

With one last threatening glare at the grounder she bobs her head and obeys, neglecting to tack on her customary _yes, sir_ in what counts as an open display of rebellion from a woman so devoted to her job it’s managed to subsume the rest of her identity.

It’s a humbling realization. She’d sounded so much like he imagined Jaha might that he’d failed to notice her own impaired judgment, and the same fearful need for control that drove her with the grounder was behind her counsel on Abby. Violence sounded so much like duty on her tongue he accepted her advice without questioning why, and now they’ll all pay the price unless he can find a way to set it right.

He sits back down, heavily, resting his head in his hands. “If we keep going like this, we’ll never survive.” Exhaling, he twists the situation in his mind, turning it to examine each angle and see if a better road lays hidden under the apparent lack of hope. “There has to be a better way.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Marcus can see the grounder shift in his bonds, head tilted in a way that says even if he can’t understand the words, he’s been _heard_. Lifting his head to lock their gazes, Marcus feels that road begin to reveal itself.

 

* * *

 

Jackson is finishing up his work on her back when Marcus steps through the flap and clears his throat awkwardly. Jackson stiffens behind her, ready to take a step forward and she twists to pat his wrist, ignoring the way it pulls on her burned skin and reignites the pain.

“Jackson, why don’t you go check on Raven? I know she promised to stay off her feet, but if she’s up and moving again, there’s a good chance she’s already pushing herself too hard.”

“Are you sure? I can stay.” The question is for her, but his eyes are on Marcus.

They’re having some sort of silent conversation over her head and it’s the final indignity heaped upon a day full of the same, so this time she gives him a firmer pat accompanied by a little shove. “I’m fine. Go check on Raven, Jackson.”

It’s not a request, and he knows it. Nodding, he bites back any argument and glares at Marcus one more time before leaving them alone.

The silence falls, thick and uncomfortable, and Abby watches Marcus wait for her to break it with no small amount of satisfaction.

Finally he sighs and gives in, wetting his lips. “Can I see them?” Marcus looks like he regrets the words as soon as they’ve burst from his lips, but doesn’t take them back.

Unlike Raven’s request this is not going to be soothing and Abby finds the urge to grant it rising regardless. She can’t tell if it’s revenge or forgiveness or some heady, terrible cocktail of both driving her to oblige him, but the yes hovers on her lips too easily to ignore.

Finally, she nods, and turns to give him permission to approach and look his fill.

His footsteps are silent, but as he approaches the pained catch to his breathing betrays how close he is. She feels the heat of his hand hovering just above a burn a few inches above the upper curve of her hip, but he doesn’t touch her. “I’m sorry.”

“Did you what you wanted?”

“I don’t…”

Abby sighs and turns back around, trying to ignore the shine of tears in his eyes. “Is order restored?”

“No. But I hope it will be, soon.”

Before she can pull that apart and tease out the meaning he adds, “I hope you don’t think I wanted to do that to…” he falters. “To anyone, let alone to you.”

She can’t help but feel he meant to say something else, but the words ring out with sincerity regardless. “I know you didn’t, Marcus, but I didn’t want to do what I did either.”

He nods, hair falling into his eyes, calling attention to the half moons of purple marking out how little he’s savored achieving something she thought he always wanted. “I’m going to get her back, Abby, and our best chance of making that happen and maybe negotiating a real, lasting peace is reaching an accord with their commander.”

Her heart leaps, the room tilting on its side and then back again as she tries to make herself process his words and believe they’re real. It doesn’t sound like he’s promising her some vague, future attempt. “Marcus…”

“I put together a team, they’re getting supplies together and bringing our prisoner to the gates.” His tone goes a little wry. “He’ll act as our guide.”

It’s hard to think of anything past the relief and gratitude, but the obvious threat punctures her vision of Clarke with harsher realities. “What if he leads you into a trap?”

“It’s a possibility, but it’s a risk we have to be willing to take. A chance taken on a hope for something better.” Lips quirking in a sad, scant smile, he brings a hand up as if to touch her cheek before letting it fall. “I did hear you, Abby. It was never a matter of not hearing you.”

“I’ll come with you.” It’s for his sake as much as her own that she offers, and when his smile becomes something more honest Abby feels a small, hopeful smile of her own form only to be dashed by his reply.

“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re needed here.”

“Jackson can handle medical on his own—”

“That may well be true, but it’s not just medical I need you to look after.” Her confusion must read in her face, because his cheeks crease with weary amusement. “Our people need a chancellor worthy of them.” He takes hold of her and places something on her palm, cold edges of metal digging in when he closes her fingers around the pin. “They need _you_.”

It’s only natural to close the distance between them and wrap her arms around his back, pin still clenched in her hand. Marcus goes stiff and then relaxes with a wet laugh, arms coming up to hover above the bare skin of her lower back before settling on her hips.

She can’t say if he leans down first or she surges up, only that they meet in the middle. His mouth moves over her own with bruising tenderness and the kiss says everything they can’t, apologies and explanations tendered in a language they haven’t used to betray each other and somehow don’t need to mend.

“I’ll find her.” He murmurs the words into her hair, heartbeat thundering away in his chest even as his hands stay delicate as spun glass. “I’ll bring your daughter back to you, Abby, I swear it, but you have to lead our people.”

“I will.” The tears come without her bidding, soaking into Marcus’ shirt. “And you need to come back, too.”

“I…” The confusion in his face nearly cracks her heart in two.

“Promise me you’ll come back, Marcus.” _To me_ , she can’t quite say out loud.

He inhales shakily, lips pressed together to try and contain himself. “I promise.”

Jackson enters on the heels of Marcus’ exit, giving him a suspicious look that turns to rage as soon as he sees the tears working their way down her cheeks. “This time I really am going to hit him.”

“Jackson, no.” When he ignores her and turns to follow Marcus instead, she grabs his arm. “Jackson!” Some of her relief must come through with the urgency, and some of his anger leaks away to be replaced with confusion.

“What is it?”

“He’s going to find Clarke.”

And leaving _now_ , he’d said. She pulls away from Jackson and runs for the door, ignoring his shout as everything fades away in favor of her what she needs to do.

Marcus is already at the fenceline, but he’ll still be within earshot if she raises her voice. Abby stops, panting, and takes a moment to catch her breath. She needs to say goodbye. A real one, if it’s their last.

“Marcus!” He stops and turns, body tensed for action until he realizes she’s fine. She raises her arm in a goodbye, not bothering to pretend tears aren’t threatening to gather. “May we meet again.”

His smile warms the pit of her belly and makes keeping the tears at bay easier. “May we meet again.” His voice is quieter than her own, but it floats back up the path and stays with her even as his figure fades into the trees.

“Abby.” Sinclair appears at her elbow with an ease born of practice. “Or I guess it’s chancellor, now?”

She shoves him, just a little, elbow digging into his side. The pin is a conscious weight in her hand, now, and with an unexpected thrill of fear she affixes it to her collar. “Let’s start with Abby and work from there. So, where are we on getting the fence up and running?”

His answer washes over her, and bit by bit the responsibility Marcus has entrusted her starts to become real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CUE SORRY NOT SORRY!!! I've been waiting gleefully for this chapter for ages and I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I did finally getting to write it.
> 
> In the next update, you guys get to see the newest experiment a sharp eye might have already predicted by the number of chapters: I'm doing one chapter per episode, even the episodes where Kane and Abby are mentioned rather than seen on-screen. That means certain chapters will be 100% original scenes and not a mix of original ones and reimaginings of canon, starting with chapter four. See you guys on the other side with this new exciting ground to break!


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